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IS MEXICO 
WORTH SAVING 



By 
GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN 

LATE C0N5UL-GENBRAL,ciTY OP MEXICO 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 1920 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 



/i 



Printed in the United States of America 



P9ta» or 

BRAUNWORTH » OO. 

BOOK MM4UFA0TURCRC 

enOOKLYN, N. Y. 

OCT 30 1920 



S)r,I.ARnl:-']3 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Carranza 13 

II What Is She ...... 35 

III Govern^ient by Banditry ... 65 

IV Robbery by Decree 102 

V Why Armenia 135 

VI Negotiation by Ultimatum Only 171 
VII The Only Way .207 



IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 



IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 
CHAPTER I 

CARRANZA 

Dating from the Conquest, Mexico has been 
the recognized kaleidoscope among the nations. 
So rapidly are events habitually juggled through- 
out her territories that no man, whether native 
or foreign observer, has ever prophesied with 
success as to the course she would take in any 
crisis unless he prophesied disaster on the theory 
that what has been, will be. 

The average American for whom this book 
is written has neither the time nor the inclina- 
tion to study the thousand aspects of the shifting 
prisms which make up the Mexican kaleidoscope, 
but it will pay him now more than ever before 
to grasp certain phases which stand out above 
the confusion of the general panorama and 
estimate for himself the force of the conclusions 
which will be presented as embracing the only 

13 



14 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

satisfactory and permanent solution of a problem 
that must inevitably continue to annoy us until 
it is finally settled. 

The first of these phases is the consideration 
that however rapid the changes in the Mexican 
situation, the ingredients are constant. If this 
truth is seized and held, a long step will have 
been taken toward simplification and under- 
standing, because it will be seen that we need 
not bother with isolated turmoil except as illus- 
trating the study of what can be considered a 
permanent condition of unrest. 

Fasten your mind on this permanent condi- 
tion of unrest. Whence does it arise? Why 
does it repeat itself? Why has it been unpre- 
cedentedly acute during the last seven years? 
How have we contributed to its increase? Why 
does it matter more to us to-day than it did 
during the three-quarters of a century of anarchy 
which preceded Diaz? Most important of all, 
why are we being rapidly driven to a point where, 
irrespective of our inclination, we must both 
understand and take action on these questions? 



CARRANZA 15 

There are two ways of answering a question: 
one IS by unsupported statement, the other is by 
conviction. We employ the former toward chil- 
dren, often with astonishing results. "What is 
adoption?" asks the shorter catechism and 
answers itself in the same breath, "An act of 
God's free grace;" whereupon at least one child 
was convinced that Godfrey's Grace had been up 
to something. But if left to themselves children 
invariably employ the method of conviction as 
evidenced by the reply of a youngster to the ques- 
tion, "What is thought?" "Thought is the 
greatest think man ever thunk of; if it wasent 
for thunk man wouldent be no greater nor a 
horse." 

From reading these two answers which would 
you learn more about, adoption or thought? 
There is no doubt in my own mind as to the 
relative value of the two methods of assertion 
and conviction; nevertheless I shall use them 
both because the mere listing of questions with 
accompanying didactic answers serves to fasten 
attention on the matter to be discussed and holds 



16 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

subsequent persuasion to certain very definite 
ends. 

Following this intention, whence does Mex- 
ico's permanent condition of unrest arise? From 
maladministration of public funds. Why does 
it repeat itself? Because there has never been 
party government with its swing of the pendulum 
of power, but a succession of oligarchies. Why 
has it been unprecedentedly acute during the 
last seven years? Because it has exceeded the 
bounds heretofore recognized as limiting the 
oppressions of group governments to their own 
nationals. How have we contributed to this 
increase of an evil? By propounding the extra- 
ordinary doctrine that no American has a right 
to live abroad. Why does chaos in Mexico 
matter more to us to-day than it did during the 
three-quarters of a century preceding Diaz? 
Because upon invitation of his government we 
sent over forty thousand Americans and a bil- 
lion and a half dollars into the country. Why 
are we being rapidly driven to a point where we 
must both understand and take action on these 



CARRANZA 17 

questions whether we want to or not? Because 
a nation can ignore a cur yapping at its heels but 
not a knife held at its back. 

There you have the thesis of this argument. 
It is not my purpose to take each of these asser- 
tions in the order they have been set down and 
prove them by an endless array of incidents 
covering a hundred years of history. That 
would be merely to invite you to confuse yourself 
by gazing into the kaleidoscope. The most 
I hope to do is to fasten your attention on a 
series of illuminating high-lights so that at the 
end you can say: "These deductions are well 
founded; the conclusions appeal to reason; the 
solution of the problem is adequate/* 

When one is inviting a busy man to solve 
a troublesome equation, the very first step is 
to persuade him that its solution is urgent, that 
it is important to him individually. Average 
men are slow to perform any given action on the 
ground that it will save the world, but they are 
quick in decision if it is a matter of saving five 
cents. The unthinking cynic is apt to cry. 



18 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

"Human nature!'* in the face of this truth, and 
he is dead wrong. The reason average man is 
slow to save the world and quick to save a nickel 
is that when dreamtime is over he can't per- 
suade himself that a single action will save the 
world but he can believe that it may save five 
cents. Here you have the difference between a 
mirage and a carfare, between altruism running 
wild and common sense plodding along on the job. 

Before the writer went to Mexico he was 
an advocate of a league to enforce peace. Two 
years in that country reversed his system of 
thought. What had happened? Fancy had been 
wrecked on fact. He knew from the inside that 
during years we had held a tacit mandatory from 
Great Britain and France over Mexico. In its 
exercise we had successively applied the following 
shibboleths of international altruism: watchful 
waiting, hands off, self-determination, no force 
against a weaker nation, benevolence and no 
protection to nationals abroad. 

He was one of the inactive agents in the 
official trying out of every one of these slogans of 



CARRANZA 19 

peace at any price and he can conscientiously 
take his oath before man and God that in every 
case these doctrines have been the source of 
misery without benefit not only to those of 
our own flesh and blood who innocently went 
abroad in the faith of an established tradition of 
protection but to the Mexicans themselves. 
Pricked by the goad of facts he was forced to 
realize against his natural inclination and personal 
interests that you cannot reach a millennium by 
hanging in air a roof of peace unsupported by 
the foundations and props of elementary justice. 
It is possible that you agree with that asser- 
tion but fail to see what individual interest you 
have in reviewing the remarkable career of Car- 
ranza, made possible only by the no less remark- 
able stand taken by President Wilson and ending 
in one of the great futilities of history. If fate 
had not brought these two extraordinary indi- 
vidualities into juxtaposition, — that is, if the 
greatest illusionist in our own history had not 
synchronized with the greatest opportunist Mex- 
ico has produced, — we would not be faced to-day 



20 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

With an astonishing dilemma. In other words, 
if altruism had met altruism no damage would 
have been done; but with our own pilot throwing 
overboard the working gear of the ship of state, — 
masts, stays and anchor, everything but the 
hull itself,— and the other pilot salvaging the 
lot with both hands, it is time we awoke to the 
fact that we have showered on the Mexicans 
unwarranted concessions which cannot be assim- 
ilated by them without causing national indiges- 
tion, and which we must devise some means of 
rescinding for the benefit of the latest Mexican 
Republic no less than for our own. 

Just what was the working gear President 
Wilson abandoned? When he declared publicly 
for watchful waiting, he put public interest in 
outrages across the border to sleep; when he 
announced the doctrine of hands off, he sapped 
the strength from diplomatic protest; when he 
Ccime out for self-determination, he blinded him- 
self and the world to the fact that Mexico has 
had self-determination for a hundred years; 
when he proclaimed benevolence to Mexico and 



CARRANZA 21 

no protection to nationals abroad, he made all 
ultimatums absurd; when he declared for no 
force against a weaker nation, he abandoned the 
anchor of an appeal to arms, the basis and founda- 
tion without which all negotiation, friendly or 
unfriendly. Is simply non-existent. 

For the course of this chapter, never mind 
whether you think he was right or wrong but 
admit that since the fall of Huerta, President 
Wilson has been an attitude in his relations to 
Mexico, never a force. This brings us into 
position for a study of Carranza, a man who in the 
six years preceding his tragic death showed a 
greater individual development than any per- 
sonality in America since Lincoln. That his 
growth was inverted and found expression not 
in the liberation but in the oppression of a people 
does not diminish his significance; it merely 
stamps it with a different hall-mark. 

Three years ago Carranza was balsoiced above 
a quaking military bog; twelve months later 
he was a power with the apparent stability of 
a rock. What was the answer? He had hit upon 



22 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

a formula. He had discovered that by taking 
one part sophistry, two parts blood money, and 
three parts hatred of the United States he could 
coagulate the quagmire under him into temporary 
concrete. He did it and from that emplacement 
systematically slapped us with an immunity 
which astonished himself, his associates, and 
the world at large. Opportune turns of the 
wheel of fortune and the effective moral aid of the 
President of the United States placed him at the 
head of a nominal Mexican government so inse- 
cure in every element which tends toward stability 
among normal peoples that his position appeared 
absolutely untenable. Before him stretched a 
rough road strewn with the rocks of growing 
deficits, internal disorders, clamoring claims, and 
hedged by the endless byways of reconstruction. 
Behind him was a record of prowess by the grace 
of luck and, lurking In the shadow, the enigmat- 
ically smiling faces of half a dozen generals, any 
one of whom could have pushed the Supreme Chief 
off his rickety pedestal by the raising of a little 
finger. What saved him for a meteoric rise and an 



CARRANZA 23 

inevitable crash? His difficulties and the echoing 
emptiness of the national larder. He was heir to 
a heritage which no one envied. 

The nionths of grace granted him by that 
single condition proved a forcing house for ele- 
ments of greatness in Carranza, wholly unsus- 
pected by his quiescent rivals or the public at 
large. He had no ardent admirers even among 
his own people. He was absolutely devoid of the 
magnetism of a popular leader, he was unsup- 
ported by any spectacular achievement, insecure 
in his hold on imaginations easily fired by elo- 
quence. He lacked, in comparison with certain 
of his forerunners, the loud-mouthed echoing 
of grandiloquent ideals from a host of hungry 
satellites. When every one expected him to fall 
as a matter of course he stood because none had a 
motive for hastening the empty debacle, and as 
a result he gained time. 

To none of his predecessors had time brought 
anything but disaster, for Mexico is the home 
of the coup d'etat, of fame born overnight, 
and of man in breathless and often ridiculous pur- 



24 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

suit of the event. But Carranza seemed different. 
He had three virtues highly praised among 
mortals, but seldom exercised because their 
power IS so slow in accumulation: silence, pa- 
tience, immobility. Behind that triple screen 
he sat like some hibernating insect and projected 
his antennae, Luis Cabrera, Alberto Pani, Rafael 
Nieto, all civilians, into the surrounding atmos- 
phere, feeling out the calm before the storm. 

At that time, over three years ago, he was at a 
momentous parting of the ways, but how far he 
sensed the fact will never be known, for such words 
as come from the mouth of an established oracle 
never fit the small beginnings of power. Never- 
theless he had a choice more distinctly defined 
than any granted his many prototypes. Cir- 
cumstances were blocked out for him in unusu- 
ally clear masses. The World War was at its 
height and absorbed the attention of the American 
people and government. From the same source, 
and in the face of a wrecked banking system, had 
sprung a lusty little trade boom which sufficed 
to feed the exchequer hand to mouth and day by 



CARRANZA 25 

day. Finally, there was an almost totally fresh 
deal in resident American officials from the Ambas- 
sador down, men picked for their experience 
in Latin affairs, unbiased by the trying events 
which had scarred their predecessors, and trained 
in a school of effective compromise, friendly by 
profession. 

Carranza had the choice of two roads. He 
could accept Fletcher's Elmbassy and the revi- 
talizing of our consular establishment throughout 
Mexico, in the spirit evidenced by the action of 
the United States in sending a full quota of 
officers, and by so doing lift his country out of a 
harassing maze of misunderstanding to a pinnacle 
of prosperity never before attained. Or he could 
turn a cold eye on the hand of friendship and 
build an insecure edifice of his own on the rubble of 
internal greed, jealousies and pride. 

The horns of this dilemma were not equal. 
The road to international friendship was open 
as far as the eye could see, but there was a gamble 
at its end. Carranza could hang a policy of 
rapprochement on the peg of our passive resistance 



26 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

to Huerta and consequent aid to himself, open up 
genuine negotiations for a settlement of all 
outstanding differences, assume a position of 
benevolent neutrality toward the World War, 
reap the full benefits for his country of a tre- 
mendous rush in trade, borrow the millions he 
needed for a funding of every foreign obligation, 
revivify industry, and substitute for the tradi- 
tional enrichment of the few by graft a wave of 
almost universal prosperity. He could have done 
all this. But he could not estimate his chances of 
holding the replenished resources of the nation 
against the enigmatically smiling military com- 
manders behind his back once his success should 
have aroused their cupidity. That was the 
gamble with honor he refused to face, and for 
what an alternative! 

He turned into the road of opportunism, not 
suddenly, nor with a blare of trumpets, but with 
a shrewd and measured calculation. If an epi- 
gram can stamp a hall-mark on any career, it 
may be said of Carranza that he was established 
by the conditions that threatened him. Without 



CARRANZA 27 

power there is no danger. The military were 
dangerous to him; he knew it, everybody knew 
it, it was the talk of the streets. He was no sol- 
dier. He could not attain to a legitimate share 
in that power, but by taking thought for a month 
of morrows he could bend temporarily the whole 
of it to his own uses. 

How did he do it? By looking for the danger 
behind the danger. What gave strength to the 
military? Not honesty, nor patriotism, nor 
enforcement of order, but patronage, hypocrisy 
in the face of unsettled conditions, and last, but 
by no means least, the immemorial right among 
the family of Mexican generals of every genera- 
tion to point to the Colossus of the North, and 
yell "Treason!'* at any reasonable arrangement 
with the United States. Here was his formula — 
graft, banditry and international insult in combi- 
nation; and apparently no gamble at the end of 
the road. 

By selling himself body and soul to the mili- 
tary through emptying into its pockets sixty per 
cent, of the national revenue, it became his ally 



28 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

at least for as long as the exchequer could stand 
the strain. Hand in hand with that result went 
one of far-reaching consequences. Mexico was 
not at war. She was not even threatened with 
war. Why, then, spend almost two-thirds of 
her total resources in maintaining an army? 
The answer was, bandits, internal disorders. 
While they lasted the army had a reason for 
existence. The fact that these disorders existed 
up to the day of the disaffection of Obregon and 
his followers, even at the doors of the capital, 
carries on its face the proof that the army realized 
from the first the necessity for keeping intact, as 
long as it was profitable, the right-angled triangle 
with lawlessness for its base, the military as the 
upright and Carranza in the role of chestnut 
snatcher as the buttressing h5^otenuse. 

If the results of Carranza's taking the wrong 
turn had been limited to a petty conspiracy for 
the bleeding of his own country, we could shrug our 
shoulders and pass on as we have for a century 
past, but the fatality about any crossroads is that 
it implies an increasing divergence. If one of 



CARRANZA 29 

those two paths led to mutual benefit for the 
United States and Mexico, the other led neces- 
sarily to estrangement. If one meant pacifica- 
tion, security for both labor and capital, inter- 
national honor and reconstruction, the other 
meant internecine warfare, abandoned fields, 
rusting industries, the palm of bad faith among 
nations, penury and despair to all save the mili- 
tary clique and its satellites. The greatness of 
Carranza was in a measure forced upon him. 
Nothing short of President Wilson's reiterated 
assurances that whatever Mexico's course, he 
would remain passive, could have lured Carranza 
to follow the road to power at so breakneck a pace; 
but once he awoke to find his feet set on that 
highway he developed extraordinary attributes 
of vision, understanding and constant action. 
What I mean by that is that he did not consciously 
choose the goal of estrangement from the United 
States but having had it handed to him on a 
platter, garnished with racial prejudice in his 
own country and with supine acquiesence in 
ours, he saw his chance. He not only accepted 



30 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

the goal; with his eyes wide open he decided that 
since he had to travel that road he would miss no 
single opportunity of aggrandisement for himself 
and incidentally for Mexico. 

From that day a remarkable contest arose 
between the presidents of the two countries. 
One started throwing away all he possessed and 
the other set out to grab all he could get. It 
is easier to drop things than it is to pick them up, 
consequently the honors of this herculean battle 
went to Carranza, for we let go no single hard- 
earned item of precedent, prestige or power 
which he failed to seize before it hit the ground 
and turn to his own uses. 

If it were possible to put personalities out 
of mind and study these two individuals as 
mighty exponents of diametrically opposed ideas, 
certain truths would stand out above the plane 
of controversy and reestablish common sense as 
the proper basis for comity between nations. 
Wilson stood for internationalism in its most 
altruistic interpretation^ Carranza for nationalism 
in its most selfish application. Wilson buried 



CARRANZA 31 

his head not in sand but in the clouds of chimerical 
aspirations, abstract considerations and nebular 
intentions. In other words, he perched on a 
weather-vane and never knew from one moment 
to another which way he was headed. Carranza 
kept his eye peeled, his feet on Mother Earth, 
and followed the ball morning, noon and night. 
Wilson was passive; Carranza active. 

We need not go here into the natural laws 
which govern the development of bodies in action 
and inaction beyond noting that passivism 
implies voluntary atrophy; the pacifist is entirely 
logical only when he is dead. The activist, how- 
ever, thrives on the submission of others; he grows 
by acquisition. By no other formula can we 
account for the astonishing evolution of Carranza 
during the last three years of his disastrous reign. 
He gorged himself on the inanition of Wilson. As 
a result, as far as our relations with Mexico at 
the present day are concerned, our interests can 
best be pictured as in the position of a large frog 
swallowed whole by a small snake. 

If these two presidential gladiators had 



32 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

lined up behind their personal property only 
and one had said, "See if you can take faster than 
I can throw away,'* and the other had replied, 
"See if you can throw away faster than I can 
take," the battle might have gone on for seven 
years without arousing anything beyond good- 
natured laughter; but unfortunately what our 
President threw overboard so recklessly was the 
commerce of the United States, the traditions of 
every-day good faith of the American people, 
the safety of our nationals wherever they may wish 
to wander, the conception of justice jirst as the 
basis of international dealing and incidentally 
the respect of the Mexicans, — in short, almost 
the entire diplomatic heritage of the nation. 
Could we balance against this loss any genuine 
benefit to Mexico we might take vicarious 
satisfaction in the sacrifice, but seven years of 
pusillanimity on our part disguised under the 
term of benevolence produced no happy nation 
south of the border. On the contrary, since the 
success of the Obregon revolution it has become 
common talk throughout Mexico that the stand 



CARRANZA 33 

taken by Wilson, amounting to tacit approval of 
all Carranza's activities, was the preponderant 
source in Mexico of internal strife and disorder. 
Carranza alone emerged from the wreckage with 
added stature. 

Because we were easy to feed upon he grew 
to proportions which otherwise he would never 
have attained. He had the shrewdness to see 
that self-imposed weakness smells the same as 
weakness under any other name, he appreciated 
the fact that any policy is supreme over no policy. 
He chose a single road, traveled along it doggedly 
and left Wilson on his weather-vane four years be- 
hind history. Carranza, the individual, has been 
eliminated, but the unwarranted concessions which 
we lavished upon him do not pass with his down- 
fall; they have stood for seven years and under the 
name of precedents they are bound to prove 
stumbling blocks in the path of any sane inter- 
national readjustment. 

By reason not so much of his crown of martyr- 
dom but because he was steadfast to the end in 
flaunting the crushing power involved in the aloof- 



34 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

ness of the United States, Carranza's ppsition in 
history is assured. He was the opportunist who 
never missed a chance, — not even in death. He 
stands as a concrete fact against a background of 
illusions. He died the undefeated champion of 
divorce at any price between Latin America and 
the United States, and made us and his own people 
unwilling heirs to years of avoidable unrest. What 
strength he bequeaths to his country is the 
memory of pledges broken, traditions uprooted, 
and international obligations repudiated, all with 
impunity. By that legacy alone, however, he 
quit the game of life as he saw fit to play it— a 
winner. 



CHAPTER II 

WHAT IS SHE 

Do YOU know Mexico? Have you ever 
traversed her plains or crossed the superb ranges 
of her mountains? She is the woman par exceU 
lence among nations, a naturally fruitful vine, 
mistress of more varieties and changing moods 
than any other equal territory on the face of the 
earth. Her feet are dipped in tepid waters, her 
skirts trail the lush riches of the tropics, she is 
girdled with fertile though abandoned valleys, 
bedecked with gold, silver and irrepressible 
harvests, and crowned with a diadem of snow- 
capped peaks. She is forever in travail and, 
rain or shine, troubled or untroubled, presents 
to the world's commerce men-children full- 
grown— bullion, by the carload; hemp, by the 
million bales; oil, beyond the capacity of any 
known method of transportation. 

Just iat this point, and to stem the cupidity 
that may arise from such a picture in the minds of 

35 



36 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

those who look upon any territorial maiden in 
distress as fair prey, let me say that nothing in 
this argument of a great issue should be con- 
strued as advocating the annexation by conquest 
of all or part of Mexico under any conceivable 
eventuality. We must do something; the time 
is upon us when we have it in our power to do 
something tremendously jconstructive, but to 
square that something with our own ideals and 
the demands of humanity we require more than 
a moment of thought or an outburst of chauvin- 
ism. We need to balance the present against the 
past, review the record of affront and injury, 
and then turn our minds to the crystallizing of 
vague desires for a clean-up, any clean-up, into 
a definite and concise program^aimed at a single 
goal, which, once reached, will insure international 
peace and internal tranquillity not for a day, a 
year, or even a dictator's lifetime, but for such a 
period as blesses only those monuments of human 
endeavor which are built in wisdom on the lasting 
foundations of elementary justice, genuine equal- 
ity and actual freedom. 



WHAT IS SHE 37 

Why not state that goal here and now in a 
paragraph, and be done with it? Because no 
man can judge a penalty without considering 
the crime. Because we are not ready for im- 
mediate absorption of a conclusion based on frag- 
mentary evidence. Because, in spite of the flood of 
exposures of outrages perpetrated in Mexico and 
let loose by our daily press, the public still knows 
nothing of their basic causes. 

When an American attempts to visualize 
Mexico in her relation to the United States, 
what does he see? A yapping terrier fighting 
the tail of a snoring St. Bernard? A curious mon- 
key hammering with a rock on the percussion 
cap of an unexploded shell? A teasing boy 
experimenting on how far he can go without 
colliding with a slipper? If these conceptions, 
all tolerant and unfortunately wide-spread, were 
near the truth, we might be justified in balancing 
the ills of continued indifference, watchful wait- 
mg, and subterfuge against the burdens and the 
annoyance, to a war-weary world, of decisive 
action. 



38 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

But Mexico to-day, whatever she may have 
been in the past, is more than a yapping cur, 
a teasing boy, or a curious monkey, and it is 
high time that the man in the street should 
measure her potential viciousness, revise his 
misconception, and read the writing on the wall 
of a hundred years of history and four years of 
Carranza. Mexico has a continuing policy not 
invented but innate, sucked in with mother's 
milk. Among devotees of a certain pastime it 
can be described as the art of passing the buck; 
in more dignified language, she blinds us from her 
pepper-box of high-sounding words and behind 
that screen resorts with astonishing success and 
redundancy to actions treacherous to our welfare 
and disastrous to her own. 

If we do not adopt an active policy having a 
definite aim and stick to it, she will repeat this 
procedure sooner or later, whoever happens to be 
in temporary possession of her coffers. You and I 
have a legitimate lien on these coffers by right of 
purchase and it will repay you to learn why and 
how as well as its extent. 



WHAT IS SHE 39 

Just what percentage of a hundred millions 
of us is interested in trade or in banking or in 
manufacture for export or in the purchase of 
raw materials for home consumption or in the 
every-day marketing of goods or in commerce 
in the big sense of world-crop movements? Do 
you belong under that list? If so forget the 
emotionalism and the interested propaganda that 
have made the Mexican question a bore to the 
practical mind and wake up to the fact that you 
are sitting in on a big deal, that you have been 
in it a long, long time and that before you know it 
somebody will poke you in the ribs and call on 
you to decide in a hurry whether you are going 
to defend your margin. 

A man's actions are too often like seeds from 
an unreliable seed-house. He plants them, specu- 
lates knowingly on the crop he thinks he is sowing 
and then wakes up to the morning after. Where 
he expected a forest he reaps corn or tares and to 
his amazement what he thought was a JrijoU 
turns out to have been an acorn. This happened to 
Carranza. In propitiating the military with 



40 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

over half the sugar in the national barrel he did 
not reckon on the creation of a mastering brute 
through fattening the belly of banditry; in 
sticking pins into the softest portion of the United 
States while its face was turned inexorably 
toward Europe he did not foresee a feverish out- 
burst of race hatred so violent that it was bound 
to bum itself out Least of all did he imagine that 
from the con\bination of these two lucky-strike 
departures he was to balloon into the champion of 
all Latin America against the Gringo. 

What is Mexico? Is she the barren rampart 
of rock that frowns from the west on the Gulf 
of California or the alkali and cactus desert that 
baffled Pershing, or is she potentially the richest 
country of her size in the wide world, — ^and no 
mean size at that? Here are the facts. From 
the snow-capped breasts of Popocatapetl and 
Ixtaccihuatl, hanging seventeen thousand feet in 
air, she radiates through frigid, temperate and 
tropic zones. She can and does play the whole 
octave of agricultural production from winter 
wheat to sorghum, sorghum to sugar cane, sugar 



WHAT IS SHE 41 

cane to coffee, coffee to cotton, cotton to chicle, 
and chicle to the guayule of desert country and the 
henequen of torrid sands. 

Since the fencing of our own West and up to 
the fall of Diaz her plains swarmed with such 
herds as are only a memory to cattlemen of the 
defunct lariat school. Twelve years ago a single 
proprietor branded ninety thousand calves and 
had to let the rest enter the maverick class. Where 
are these cattle to-day? Stolen, scattered and shot 
down by the thousand for the sake of the hides 
alone, some by out and out bandits but a far 
greater number by G)nstitutionalist predatory 
troops. The cattle are gone but the plains still 
stretch to the horizon. 

It may be that you are not interested in the 
farm and range products, the strictly internal 
wealth of Mexico. Think a minute. You know 
our own country. Where is its spinal column, 
the backbone of the nation, if not in field and 
farm? He who sells, buys. Now, how many 
motor-cars, tractors, silos, reapers, sewing ma- 
chines, lightning rods, spools of cotton, bolts of 



42 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

cloth and boxes of bonbons do you think the 
backbone of the United States would buy if all 
its railways but one were subject to almost daily 
wrecks by dynamite, if half of its states were 
overrun by outlaws and if over the other half 
the national army were turned loose to bleed 
graft from every producer? 

Such was the unhappy condition of Mexico under 
Carranza; yet in the face of it she did business 
with us in 1918 to the tune of $245,613,991 as 
against a total trade with the world at large of 
$80,496,365 for the last six months of 1908 when 
she was still looked upon as a nation rather than 
as a seething cauldron of oppressors and oppressed. 
If she can reach that figure with a broken back- 
bone what might she not attain to under a stable 
and just government which, not in words but in 
actual practise, should permit the peon to plant 
with some hope of reaping his crop and not the 
whirlwind, refugee property holders to return to 
their ranches, industries to resume and merchants 
to import with a reasonable chance of getting the 
goods bought for cash in full with their orders? 



WHAT IS SHE 43 

But when it comes to measuring the size of 
the commercial pot at stake, Mexico's internal 
wealth is only half the story. Owing to the in- 
vasion of foreign blood, money and energy which 
took place during the last quarter of the nine- 
teenth century she experienced a resurrection 
of which the average American is surprisingly 
ignorant. Here is a country that lies cheek by 
jowl with ours along a border of eighteen hundred 
and ten miles, yet how many of us know that in 
spite of insurrection and banditry on the one hand 
and a government whose motto was the destruc- 
tion of property values on the other, she is to-day 
a large factor in half a dozen crops and products 
the movements of which shake the markets of 
the world? 

What are these sources of wealth? Does the 
list touch you? Crude oil, silver, gold, hemp, 
chicle — the foundation of chewing gum — and cof- 
fee. Until the wholesale destruction of plantations 
by bandits and of industries by Carranza's govern- 
ment she was an exporter of rubber, sugar and 
tobacco. During the war she became our main- 



44 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

stay in the supply of certain basic ores. In 1919 
she exported 74,000,000 barrels of crude oil 
valued at over $90,000,000; in 1911, before the 
total production of gold was absorbed for internal 
uses, her export of that commodity exceeded 
$29,000,000; in 1919 she produced 1948 metric 
tons of silver bullion valued at over $80,000,000. 
The last available figures give her an average 
annual export of coffee of over 18,000 tons. 

This is not a statistical chapter. It is written 
for the man in a hurry looking for a comprehen- 
sive bird's-eye view upon which he can base a 
just and practical working estimate of the facts 
in the case. How better sum up for him a con- 
crete conclusion than by pointing out that with 
Mexico in turmoil, with all but one of her railways 
subject to frequent raids, with her entire banking 
system in suspension, with a lack of the common 
guarantees of life to any American caught ten 
miles from any town, with import and export 
taxes tripled and quadrupled, with an oligarchi- 
cal government sucking graft from every peon, — 
with this Mexico, rich even in her poverty, we 



WHAT IS SHE 45 

did a business of $277,000,000 in 1919 as against 
$141,000,000 in 1914. 

Compare those figures with her total trade of 
$80,496,365 for the last six months of 1908, not 
with the United States but with the world, 
remember that this progress was made in the face 
of a governmental destructive policy which wiped 
out ninety per cent, of her industries, invalidated 
life-long titles and undermined the good will of 
every civilized nation with which she was in com- 
mercial contact and give due credit to her as- 
tounding vitality and irrepressible natural wealth. 

Now, what is our legitimate stake in this 
neighboring country and how have we protected 
it? The best estimates place the figure at a 
billion and a half dollars, more American money 
than IS invested industrially in any other country, 
more than was so invested by Americans fifteen 
years ago in all other foreign countries put to- 
gether! How have we defended it? Ever since 
President Wilson applied the invidious tag of Big 
Interests against the fifty thousand Americans 
who were employed throughout Mexico ten years 



46 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

ago on railways, farms and ranches, in mines, 
smelters, foundries, breweries and oil-fields, we 
have defended it not at all. 

If you are an industrial, a farmer or small 
land-owner, reflect that the apathy which swept 
through the United States on account of the 
loosing of that epithet has displaced none of the 
big mining or oil companies as yet, but it threw 
out of their jobs and off their hard-earned land 
forty thousand industrials, farmers and small 
land-owners of your own flesh and blood and bids 
fair to establish a doctrine contrary to all our 
previous tradition, the doctrine that an American 
has a right to live only at home. 

Reflect further on the following lime-light 
string of incidents. A year ago I was in a small 
New York up-state city and was introduced in 
the lobby of its bank as fresh from Mexico. In- 
side half an hour a group of eight investors in 
Mexico had gathered for a post-mortem. Two 
weeks later I was in a sleepy South Jersey city 
where a doctor spoke reminiscently of when he 
refused a quarter of a million for his share in a 



WHAT IS SHE 47 

Mexican mine. He is still holding the share and 
the bag. "But," he said, "Fm not the only one. 
There are half a dozen more in this town that 
remember Mexico." Finally, the other day I 
was relating the above to some guests in New York 
when the maid in attendance murmured, "My 
husband had two rubber plantations in Mexico." 
What does this indicate? It shows that it is 
not only the West and the Southwest of the United 
States that have a stake in Mexico; it shows that 
Americans of humble station as well as large 
investors have paid a heavy price, in many cases 
all they possessed, because the President forced 
an abandonment of their rights by insisting that 
watchful waiting was a policy and not a will-o'- 
the-wisp luring us through inaction into a mire. 
With his eyes shut tight against facts, he seized 
upon the expedient of shouting Big Interests! with 
the intention or at least the result of diverting 
the public from a condition which it was begin- 
ning to see was outrageous. Incidentally the sugar- 
pill which he handed this country to quiet its 
well-founded solicitude for the welfare of our 



48 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

largest and most productive foreign colony has 
induced the murder of more Americans in ten 
years than had been murdered abroad in the 
previous century, and the proportion of capitalist 
victims to every-day, common-garden, You-and- 
I people has been as one to a hundred. Think it 
out. 

But let us take up the gage. There is some- 
thing to be said for big interests. I shall go further 
than that. I will assert that even oil interests 
have rights and to make you believe it let us 
connect them in a single paragraph with the money 
in your own pocket if you possess a Rolls-Royce or 
a flivver or work in a factory or travel by sea or 
ship goods or depend on a jitney to get to your job 
or if you contribute to the support of the United 
States Navy. 

The Mexican fields now supply over ninety per 
cent, of all the^fuel oil used on our Atlantic and 
Gulf coasts both for bunkering ships and industrial 
purposes, namely, 60,000,000 barrels per annum, 
almost double the amount that came from the 
same source in 1918. What did you pay a ton 



WHAT IS SHE 49 

for the coal in your cellar? What did your 
town's industries pay for their winter stock? 
Whatever the price it will go higher for every 
barrel of Mexican oil that is prevented from 
reaching our shores. Do you buy gasoline for 
flivver, pump, factory or cleaning gloves? The 
60,000,000 barrels of fuel oil are the residuum from 
300,000,000 gallons of gasoline which went Into 
the regular trade of this country and are helping 
to move our 6,000,000 pleasure cars, lorries and 
delivery wagons to say nothing of the tractors and 
producing agents of town and field, 

I hold no brief for any special interest and can 
prove It. I owe no favors, least of all to the oil 
interests involved in Mexico. We are not con- 
cerned here with whether those interests have 
bungled in questions of policy or not, but we are 
deeply concerned in the facts of a condition which 
among other ills threatens the very existence of 
our merchant marine. 

What are these facts? In the first place the 
vast holdings of the twenty-odd operating Ameri- 
can companies in Mexko were not secured by 



50 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

grants or concessions as the President implied 
in his speeches through ignorance or maKce; 
they were bought and paid for in the open 
market just as you bought your winter hat or an 
overcoat if you had the price. They were secured 
not only by the usual legal titles to land but by a 
clause in the mining laws under the constitution 
of 1857 which stated specifically that petroleum 
and its by-products were free of the mining law 
and subject to transfer with the soil. 

Now what follows is so extraordinary that it is 
difficult to believe. The present Mexican govern- 
ment adopted in 1917 a new constitution which 
nationalized the subsoil; in other words it de- 
clared that land titles no longer carried the 
right to the oil under the surface. No just man 
can object to that stand; it embraces a progres- 
sive principle which is already widely recognized. 
Incidentally the same constitution of 1917 carried 
assurances stating that none of its provisions was 
to be construed as retroactive. 

So far, so good. Here follows the incredible. 
By a series of decrees, unconfirmed by any Mexi- 



WHAT IS SHE 51 

can Congress, Carranza declared the clauses 
affecting oil in the new constitution to be retroac- 
tive. This colossal imposition was made possible 
only by President Wilson's repeated assertion that 
no matter what Mexico had done, or might do, 
this country would never again resort to force. 

Already it has been publicly announced that 
the Obregon government offers to recede from this 
untenable position, but we should be wary of 
accepting bare justice as though it were a great 
concession. Diplomatically, we should fight tooth 
and nail against even the appearance of trading to 
get back the inalienable rights jettisoned by Mr. 
Wilson. Bare justice is never a concession in any 
litigation; it is merely the preliminary to negotia- 
tion. 

If the oil companies had complied even under 
protest with the law of Mexico as Carranza 
individually interpreted it, any arbiter would be 
justified in holding that they had forfeited their 
existing rights as well as the right of recourse to 
Mexican or international courts. Consequently 
these companies, with a few exceptions, stood pat. 



52 15 MEXICO:WORTH SAVING 

refused point-blank to step into the trap laid for 
them and have been feeding half the lawyers m 
Mexico City in attempts to secure justice before 
courts notoriously corrupt. Of course, they 
supplemented that vain effort by appeals to our 
State Department which day by day laboriously 
ground out notes destined to no nobler effect or 
fate than to become the laughing-stock of future 
generations. 

Meanwhile Carranza steadily proceeded along 
the line of no resistance indicated to him by our 
plan of watchful waiting. Beginning with Novem- 
ber 9th, 1919, armed Federal forces closed down 
eighty per cent, of all new wells drilling in Mexico. 
Add to that the fact that a surprisingly large num- 
ber of the big wells in Mexico went out of produc- 
tion last year through exhaustion and salt-water 
flooding and you will realize in part why our Navy, 
Shipping Board and every individual consumer of 
crude oil and gasoline are so pressed to-day for a 
minimum working supply of fuel. 

By the middle of January of this year the oil 
companies were brought to bay and played their 



WHAT IS SHE 53 

last card. Their Producers 'Association abandoned 
the paralyzed machinery of the State Department 
and addressed a telegram direct to the President 
•of Mexico pointing out the disastrous economic 
consequences to the Mexican government should 
oil production come to an absolute standstill. 

It happened that at that time the millions of 
dollars paid in export taxes on oil formed the mar- 
gin of safety in the Mexican national budget, but 
the fact that Carranza conceded the granting of 
strictly temporary drilling permits, in a six-hun- 
dred-word cablegreim published in full by the press, 
IS remarkable for the manner in which that cable- 
gram was addressed rather than for its welcome 
content. 

For six months our State Department had been 
sweating notes on this very question of drilling 
permits without result. Picture for yourself the 
purely personal satisfaction of Carranza in putting 
one more of many over on that dignified division 
of our government by addressing his concession, 
whatever the underlying home conditions which 
made him grant it, not to Mr. Lansing, but to 



54 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

"The Huasteca Petroleum Co., The Texas Co. of 
Mexico, The Southern Oil & Transportation Co., 
The Scottish-Mexican Oil Co., Ltd., and othei 
signers. New York." 

Enough has been said to illustrate the enor- 
mous commercial potentialities of Mexico; enough 
has been implied to show that our attitude of 
"let her slide" toward that country has bolstered 
up a regime of disorder and produced three pre- 
sumably unexpected results. It has stifled the 
prosperity of the mass of Mexicans, it has under- 
mined our moral and physical standing in the 
country by destroying every vestige of respect for 
American life and American property, and most of 
all by the peculiar irony that keeps the sissy at 
school continually in hot water it has led us stead- 
ily not toward peace but toward war. 

Commercially,Mexicohasscarcelybeenscratched. 
What about her finances? If you have any opin- 
ion at all on the matter you probably think they 
are beyond mending because she has passed 
interest on her national obligations to the tune of 
forty-eight and a half million dollars since 1914. 



WHAT IS SHE 55 

That IS a wrong impression. The financial posi- 
tion of Mexico to-day is stronger than that of the 
vast majority of even the great nations. Her 
annual revenue at the close of Diaz' administra- 
tion according to a publication of the Pan-Amer- 
ican Union was under $55,000,000 which was 
sufficient to leave a surplus over expenditure. 
Carranza in his message to Congress last Septem- 
ber estimated the revenue for 1919 at $81,000,000 
and for 1920 at $83,500,000. The trouble with 
her revenues during her recent administration was 
not their size but the manner in which they were 
applied; sixty per cent, to a useless army, not five 
per cent, to construction. 

Her total external debt to-day plus passed 
interest is $222,023,621. Add to that a total in- 
terior debt of $84,048,459, a guaranteed debt on 
paper issues of $41,472,690, money and interest 
owed on railways in the sum of $421,319,878 and 
you will get a total national obligation exclusive of 
claims of only $768,864,648, a mere bagatelle in 
the face of her resources. Why is the figure so 
small? Because she could not borrow and she 



56 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

was not able to borrow because the Carranza re- 
gime was making ducks and drakes of her national 
honor and scraps of paper of all her promises to 
pay. Thus out of evil comes a single gleam of 
good. 

Near the start of this chapter reference was 
made to Mexico's peculiar skill in blinding us 
from her pepper-box of fine words and in matters 
of trade and commercial treaties she has one 
bogey which never fails in its mission of scaring 
us away from common-sense decisions. Its name 
is sensitiveness, alias national pride. 

An American statesman retiring without the 
honors of war from a several weeks' bout with a 
Mexican commission sat and ruminated for a long 
while; then he delivered himself of this saying 
which should become a classic in our annals. 
"You can't pin a Mexican to facts; when you try it 
he waves national pride in your face and uses his 
country's sensitiveness just the way a pole-cat 
protects himself." 

Vulgar? Perhaps; but every one of our secre- 
taries of state and ambassadors to Mexico should 



WHAT IS SHE 57 

memorize it and paste It in his hat lest he forget, 
because it is packed with Yankee penetration, 
oozes psychology and blazes the way to a new 
philosophy. Incidentally it calls the bluff that 
has so impressed our entire string "of official and 
unofficial trade publications that you can scarcely 
pick one of them up without running across col- 
umns telling us that we must pat all Latins on the 
back, speak soft and be as friendly as a hungry 
cat to get their trade. 

Do not believe it. Use your own head. *' If 
merchant No. 1 on account of racial likes or dis- 
likes pays two cents cash on a bolt of muslin more 
than merchant No. 2 he is on the road to a vacancy 
in Bradstreet's and the sooner you drop him the 
better. Ninety-nine per cent, of the merchants I 
have known are Number Twos; the other one per 
cent, were fine old fellows but they are dead. 
Pleasant salesmen, yesl But pleasant nationalism 
on our part is despised throughout the length and 
breadth of Latin America. What sells goods is the 
price at which they are offered; what determines 
the price to-day more than any other factor is 



58 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

transportation. Nothing but our own amazing 
lassitude in regard to Mexico could have robbed 
us of the full benefits of easy access to her markets. 
This leads us straight to the exceptional com- 
mand of her commerce which we held at the close 
of the war and wastefuUy threw into the discard. 
In May of 1917 our consular establishment in 
Mexico City consisted of a vice-consul, a clerk and 
a stenographer housed in a ramshackle building; 
in May of 1918 it occupied the Limantour Palace 
at the junction of the ifive great avenues of the 
city and its personnel comprised a consul-general, 
five vice-consuls and six stenographers besides 
clerks and messengers. 

What was this large force doing? Besides other 
special business arising from the war it was enforc- 
ing in conjunction with the Einbassy and in close 
cooperation with every other American consular 
officer in Mexico the Enemy Trading Act. That 
simple statement has to be enlarged to be under- 
stood. It means that under black-list rules no 
single shipment entered or left the country with- 
out the filing of exhaustive data concerning ship- 



WHAT IS SHE 59 

per, buyer and the ultimate destination of the 
goods.^ 

The Enemy Trading Act was a terrific weapon. 
To international traders of the last year of the war 
it represented powers which find no parallel short 
of the Inquisition of the thirteenth century. No 
merchant was too big or too small for the mesh of 
its universal net, or too strong or too weak to bow to 
its raised finger. The record of its enforcement in 
Mexico alone would fill a book, but we are inter- 
ested here in only two features, two outstanding 
results.^ 

The first of these was the fact that the consu- 
late general, which passed decisions in 1918 on 
over eighty million dollars of business, as well as 
many consulates, came out at the end of the war 
with a record for fair-dealing which netted them 
intimate and friendly relations with ninety per 
cent, of the firms trading with the United States. 
The second was the fact that every one of our 
consular establishments in Mexico had become a 
warehouse of commercial and statistical data 
unequaled for accuracy, thoroughness and scope 



60 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

in^the history of our trade relations and complete 
beyond the wildest dreams of the most rabid 
promoter of international commerce.^ 

Here was a God-sent chance so to knit the 
commercial fabric of the two countries that any 
threatened rupture would have raised a universal 
howl of protest. What was in the way? Our lack 
of any policy toward Mexico. "But we have a 
policy," I hear you say, "a policy of watchful 
waiting." Now think a minute and ask yourself 
if that phrase has not long since become a mere 
habit of thought. Admit that as far as Mexico 
is concerned President Wilson neither watched nor 
waited in any objective sense; he simply let things 
slide. 

At the crucial time of which I am writing the 
American official representatives in Mexico adopt- 
ed the slogan, "For heaven's sake, give us a 
policy, — any policy." They realized that with 
our army still mobilized and equipped a mere hint 
with the punch of a real, honest-to-goodness ulti- 
matum behind it would have resulted in a negotia- 
tion fairer to Mexico and more satisfying to us 



WHAT IS SHE 61 

than any treaty in the history of the two countries, 
— ^a negotiation whose importance to the peace of 
this country would have loomed large even against 
the background of the late League of Nations. 
Why? Because let Armenia live or die, Mexico 
we have always with us. 

What was missing to this happy consumma- 
tion? An ultimatum that meant what it said. 
What is an ultimatum? It is the court of last 
appeal built on the foundation of force, and on that 
foundation stands the whole fabric of international 
negotiation. So axiomatic is that statement that 
the f ramers of the League of Nations had to bow 
to it as a matter of course. 

In spite of such frenzied appeals no policy was 
forthcoming. Instead of plunging into the great 
work of knitting a commercial bond with Mexico 
the consulate general's labors were reduced to 
sending out under instructions a form letter to the 
effect that while current business could be encour- 
aged no aid would be given to any new investment 
in Mexico so long as Americans continued to be 
murdered and American property rights violated. 



62 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

The office which had been the hub of the whole 
radiating fabric of an enormous international 
commercial movement suddenly became a tomb 
and its occupants so many brass monkeys. Our 
Ambassador left the country and has never since 
returned; the Consul-General resigned. Of the 
large trained force which filled eleven rooms of the 
Limantour Palace only two individuals remain 
to-day. 

In spite of all the accounts of almost daily 
outrages in Mexico, murders of Americans, fac- 
tional outbreaks, bandit activities and finally of 
revolution, certain men who undoubtedly know 
the country continued to assert that all was 
going well and that they wished no governmental 
interference of any kind. Were these men liars? 
Not at all. They simply meant that everything 
was going well for them. They provide us with an 
excellent example of the ancient game of freeze- 
out. 

For instance: a great American concern an- 
nounced that it was strongly in favor of keeping 
hands off Mexico, that all was well below the Rio 



WHAT IS SHE 63 

Grande. In the intimacy of a club-room I asked 
one of Its officials how he could justify such a 
stand. "Well," he said, "it's this way. Where 
we come in contact with bandits we have 'fixed' 
them; where we touch the government Constitu- 
donalistas we have 'fixed' them, too. Disorder 
consequently suits us; mining claims are cheap, 
competition scarce. We yell, *Come on in, 
fellers, the water's fine,' because we know they 
won't come. In our business it's better to be 
lonely than crowded." 

So with banking, so with real estate, so with 
what few industries are still running. If I have 
given the impression that fortunes cannot be made 
in Mexico whether she is in order or disorder I 
have failed to get across with proof that she is 
tremendously worth saving. Of course money is 
being made, especially at the freeze-out table, for 
chaos invariably carries opportunities to the lucky 
few. BuU were she honestly governed, were she 
stable, were she redeemed from the stigma of an 
outlaw among nations with which a cutthroat 
oligarchy has besmirched her, her wealth would 



64 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

soon be not only tripled but distributed to the 
meek and lowly as well as to the rapacious. For 
her, the chief blessing of internal peace would 
share the attribute of mercy of the showers of 
Heaven which fall on the just and the unjust 
alike. 



CHAPTER III 

GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 

There are two groups of major questions 
which Americans are beginning to ask themselves 
consciously or subconsciously about Mexico, One 
is, "Are things going to continue to be as bad as 
they are painted by some of the experts or as 
lily-white as the advocates of self-determination 
make out? If we really have to come to a con- 
clusion whom are we to believe? By what talis- 
man or touchstone are we to determine what is 
and what isn't the truth?" 

The other group is represented by the impa- 
tient man of affairs who says, "You fellows shout 
about our national responsibility for the wreck of 
Mexico. Here Ive been tending strictly to my 
own affairs and you say that while I wasn't look- 
ing somebody has slipped a grindstone over on me 
and that its name is Mexico. Now, how did I get 
that necklace? I don't want it; I have no use for 
it, but you say I asked for it. Show me." 

65 



66 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

In reply to the first class of these enquiring 
minds I would say that the touchstone for the 
truth in regard to Mexico is a diamond with about 
a hyndred facets. Every one of these facets pre- 
sents a different view to the superficial crystal- 
gazer and it is no wonder that the general public 
is confused when half a dozen seers peering In at 
half a dozen facets shout to the world the contra- 
dictory sights they see. Why these many angles? 
In other words, why is the issue so confused and 
how is the man-in-a-hurry to seize it long enough 
to determine in his own mind and for himself what 
is really what? Will he have to tabulate a hundred 
different view-points taken by proxy? If so, 
Heaven help himi 

He will never come to that cry of despair if he 
will read on and then draw on his private stock of 
common sense. The Mexican issue is confused 
because it is so near us, because so many people 
have walked into it and out like sheep into a sheep- 
dip and set themselves up as authorities on the 
strength of the smell of Mexico that sticks to 
them. Some of these men are honest but limited 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 67 

in intelligence or the sources of their information; 
others, better informed, lack the peculiar breadth 
of view which enables a man to stand off and see 
a thousand incidents in a single sum; others, 
mainly those who have suffered disaster to person 
or property, become monochords that reduce the 
tone of all events to the knell of their own catas- 
trophe. 

The issue is further confused by that weird 
group of crusaders, some of them well-meaning, 
all of them untrained and with one exception as 
innocent of Spanish as of Sanskrit, who were sent 
by our President as special envoys and were 
allotted so many weeks each to unravel the intri- 
cacies of the Latin mind, predict the coming move- 
ments of the prize kaleidoscope among nations 
and offer a solution based upon their colossal mis- 
judgments. Of those envoys, one was man enough 
to recant all the predigested panacea with which 
he entered Mexico and publish his retraction in a 
small volume of exceptional frankness; one other 
wrote a broad-minded but radical report which was 
suppressed. As for the rest, had I the space to 



68 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

expose their predictions, fallacies and childish 
conceptions in the face of what the years have 
actually brought, never again would this country 
subscribe to the presidential dictum that the 
blind are the best leaders for the blind. 

Somewhat allied to these blunderers but by 
no means so ignorant are all those persons who 
know Mexico but have an individual ax to grind; 
people who have interest cind people who look 
forward to having interest there; concerns of all 
kinds which by holding the inside track and em- 
ploying the right men can make big profits out of 
chaos in conjunction with no competition; mer- 
chants keen on immediate sales irrespective of 
how much greater their returns might be were the 
relations between that country and ours reorgan- 
ized on a sound basis; last, least and most despic- 
able because they know better, those Americans 
who sold themselves outright for thirty pieces 
of Carranza silver, and with Cabrera, Nieto, 
Berlanga, Baragan and Pani, a cabinet standing 
on banditry, puddled their hands in Mexican 
(and American) blood for a price. 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 69* 

The message I carry to the distracted enquirer 
seeking the truth and with no time to peek through 
the hundred facets of the Mexican touchstone is 
first, examine the qualifications of the witness at 
the bar; and first, second and all the time, look 
for the motive behind the .spoken word. As a 
people and individually we pride ourselves on the 
application of common sense to our national and 
private problems. Why not apply it to sources of 
evidence? 

The altruist is abroad in the land. Helped by 
the natural aversion to all wars, just or unjust, 
which possesses our people at the present time, 
the genuine dreamer as well as the dreamer for 
profit has been able to lull the national mind into 
a state of coma on vital principles of right and 
justice by the cries of, "Hands off!", "Watchful 
.waiting!" and "Self-determination !" 

These are all excellent slogans in their place, 
but has it ever occurred to you that the mere 
shouting of a slogan does not get you anywhere? 
Have you considered that the mere shouting of a 
slogan is man's favorite method of shirking re- 



70 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

sponsibility and putting himself to sleep on a 
troublesome Issue. Have we kept hands off Mex- 
ico? No ; we interfered (as I will show later) in the 
most naive and blunderous manner. Have we 
been watchful or waiting since that solemn pledge 
went out over seven long years ago? No. We 
have simply let things slide. As for self-determina- 
tion, where is the legitimate limit of that experi- 
ment? Isn't a century of catastrophe bringing 
misery to millions enough of a try-out? 

Right here you are thinking, "This man is an 
out and out interventionist by force of arms. He 
wishes to lead us to trouble." If that is your 
thought, you are wrong. I know Mexican history. 
I know that we have already intervened in Mexico 
with colossal misjudgment and disastrous results. 
I wish to point the way in which we may best 
correct our error, pick up the pieces of a wreck and 
paste them together. I wish to lead my country 
not into the trouble it is making for itself but away 
and toward a lasting peace with a neighbor which is 
and will be forever with us though it be against us. 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 71 

What right have I to set myself up as your 
guide? You have no time to piece together the 
thousand sections of the Mexican picture-puzzle 
for yourself, but why should my work of art speak 
straighter to your heart than the brightly colored 
maps of altruists, optimists, Mexican propagand- 
ists and American financial experts in the pay, 
directly or indirectly, of whatever r6gime is tem- 
porarily on top in Mexico? 

I will again appeal to common sense. Why did 
Henry Prather Fletcher resign as ambassador to 
Mexico? I share the knowledge with many others 
that this resignation originated in August of last 
year, just three weeks after my own was accepted. 
Here are two men, each with a long record in their 
respective branches of our foreign service, who 
resign from sinecures, — one because he would not 
be associated with a commercial debacle, and the 
other because he refused to be dragged further 
along the road of diplomatic emasculation. 

Why did Fletcher force his resignation to ful- 
filment? Because he was convinced that the 



72 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

policy of the Carranza government had always 
been one of obstinate hostility to the United 
States; because he believed that the Mexican 
people generally desired good relations with us and 
would welcome an opportunity to enjoy them, 
but that throughout Carranza's tenure of power 
he deliberately defeated every effort on our 
part to establish a better understanding and to 
treat Mexico as a friendly neighbor. Because he 
saw in Carranza a man who had a rare chance to 
be of service to his distracted country but who 
through three years, while the United States 
magnanimously overlooked his rebuffs and made 
advances time after time to come to some arrange- 
ment which would be helpful to Mexico and her 
people, never missed a chance to repel these ad- 
vances with great parade of patriotism. 

Because he knew that Carranza's uncom- 
promising hostility to the United States, as clearly 
reflected in his public documents and replies to 
our many representations, was setting up an in- 
sidious anti- American propaganda throughout this 
hemisphere, formally repudiating the Monroe 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 73 

Doctrine and advocating alliances with European 
and other countries and actual treaties with Latin 
America aimed at undermining our friendships 
and influence on this side of the world. 

Because time and again as ambassador Mr, 
Fletcher had pointed out without avail in reports 
and memoranda that the attitude of the Mexican 
government in conjunction with our utter lack 
of any constructive policy was almost entirely 
responsible for the unsatisfactory relations be- 
tween the two countries and the treatment to 
which Americans as well as some other foreigners 
were subject in Mexico with respect to their lives 
and property. 

I know that these were the reasons behind Mr. 
Fletcher's withdrawal because one cannot asso- 
ciate intimately with a man for two years and 
confer with him almost daily on questions of 
commercial policy and routine without learning 
the true trend of his activities and the basic 
opinions that control his decisions. 

So much for credentials. Whom will you 
believe? The paid agents who make a vapid 



74 IS MEXICO W0RTH:SAVING 

statement that all is well with Mexico after nine 
years of chaos if we will only possess our souls in 
patience for another decade, a century or an 
indefinite epoch? Will you believe the financial 
sentimentalist on a salary who (in the face of the 
fact that for three solid years our Ambassador 
and every minor official held open the door to 
any friendly arrangement) pleads almost with 
tears in his eyes before the Senate Committee on 
Mexico that we at least give friendship a, trial? 
Or will you believe men who turned their backs on 
their personal interests rather than submit to 
being the tools of disaster under the leadership of 
a mind with which theirs did not run and which by 
reason of its isolation they were powerless to 
enlighten. 

Carranza was at no time difficult to under- 
stand; the only obstacle to comprehension on 
our part was a stubborn determination to see 
him and his cutthroat government under a 
halo of altruistic phrases and never in their every- 
day working clothes. The great accusation against 
him as a leader is that his acceptance of banditry 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 75 

as a pedestal to his government was deliberate and 
that not for a minute did he hesitate to clap the 
ladder of race-hatred, once he saw its potential- 
ities, against that pedestal and climb its easy 
rungs to the eminence upon which he suddenly 
ballooned much to his own surprise into the 
champion of all Latin America against the 
Gringo. 

This was Carranza in the second of his three 
phases, — ^hibernation, meteoric triumph and col- 
lapse, — di man totally different from the silent, 
immobile, blinking sphinx of three years ago, 
a weak old man then, peering patiently into a 
future which looked blank to everybody else 
but which opened finally into a broad highway 
hedged on one side by banditry, it is true, and on 
the other by race-hatred, — ^but an open road 
nevertheless. What was the power in Carranza 
which opened that avenue? You will laugh when 
you realize that it was genuine, authentic. Simon- 
pure potential and active Watchful Waiting. We 
talked about It; he did it. 

What does this mean? Does it mean that by 



76 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

taking thought and never missing a move Carranza 
had really developed into a giant In comparison 
with what he was? It means just that; but, 
fortunately for us, he was a giant whose stride was 
hampered by a double manacle which sooner or 
later was bound to trip him. What a shame, 
what a crime against humanity, what an oppor- 
tunity lost for the salvation of his own distracted 
country, that the man who proved himself to 
have contained the seed of greatness should have 
taken the wrong turning at the crucial moment 
of his career and led his people away from peace! 
Had he not turned to feeding the military with 
the nation's revenue he would years ago have rid 
himself of the Incubus of banditry and been In a 
position to control revolt; had he not yielded to 
the temptation of an easy and grandiloquent 
popularity founded on his nursing of hatred for the 
Gringo, he would have had such magnanimous 
support from the United States as one nation has 
never yet received from another. He might have 
been a truly great patriot, radical where Diaz was 
conservative, and yet a builder on ennobling 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 77 

foundations of lasting internal peace and inter- 
national good will. As it is, what is this giant? 
A Bhudda idol, done in gray stone, equable from 
the feet up, but with those feet placed on two run- 
away horses, outlawry and racial conflict. While 
the old man succeeded in keeping his balance he 
was wholly admirable as a high-priced acrobat,but 
when he fell one surely heard the laughter of the 
Aztec gods. 

It is fair to consider what he might have done 
to save himself at the start from an ultimately 
untenable position. He might have created a 
constabulary of his own, paid it well, established 
it as the ostensible police of the Federal District 
and, as his strength grew, played one quidnunc 
general against another until he could clap the lid 
on the pork-barrel against the military as a whole, 
disband the cirmy and take a man's chance to 
hold himself erect behind the barrier of the nation's 
resources decently and constructively applied. 
In such an enterprise he would have had the active 
and almost illimitable cooperation of the United 
States. But as has been intimated in a previous 



78 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

chapter, the moment for such action found him a 
small man, immeasurably smaller than he was at 
the time of his death. 

Why was he responsible for the wide-spread 
banditry in his country? Because he chose to 
keep the nation's illusory war-machine and 
very real and hungry corps of generals intact 
but inactive and to do it without physical exer- 
tion. What happened? The faster he shoveled 
the wealth of the nation into the bottomless gullet 
of the military, the more the military realized that 
the fat days could endure only so long as the 
outlawry throughout the country should continue 
to give the military a reason for existence. We 
will skip intermediary steps and depict the 
"system" which inevitably came into being under 
his regime. 

The president appointed a minister of war and 
received in recompense no cash but immunity 
from attack; the minister partitioned the country 
among eight generals of division and numberless 
officers of lesser rank and received as direct con- 
tributions in the form of outright graft from this 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 79 

source alone a monthly income of twenty thousand 
dollars gold. The generals of division were almost 
equally fortified against a rainy day. In the first 
place, according to the statement of a high official 
of the Mexican Treasury under Carranza, not 
over forty per cent, of the millions handed to them 
ever reached the troops for which the pay was 
Intended. But this Is a mere bagatelle In the box 
of tricks of an experienced Mexican field-marshal. 
Without attempting to give a complete catalogue 
of his liens on sudden wealth It may be said that 
one favorite method was to harass a hacienda 
worth a million, ravage it to the verge of extinc- 
tion, buy It In for a song on the most legal and 
orderly title and then settle on It such of his 
cohorts as like the new home. Another: a town 
lived by an Industry, required protection and 
could afford to pay for It. So much a month and 
the contract was kept. Why? Because If the 
industry shut down, so much a month would 
become nothing. Another: a bandit leader 
collected like tribute from a community located 
in his private beat. Formula,— bring pressure 



80 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

to bear on the bandit only until he yields to a 
fifty-fifty arrangement. 

As with these master cormorants operating in 
deals of six digits, so with the generals of the line, 
the colonels, majors and commandantes, until one 
came down to the last miserable cog in the 
machine and found the common soldier uncon- 
sciously adding a last finishing touch to Carranza's 
Frankenstein creation by trading gun and cart- 
ridges to bandits, in exchange for the first neces- 
sities of life, in lieu of that pay which started to- 
ward but never reached him. A vicious circle if 
there ever was one. Do you see it? Do you 
understand why Carranza was accused of govern- 
ment by banditry? Lay for yourself your finger 
on the link that made him own brother to every 
marauder that devastated his unhappy country. 

Obregon, the latest man on horseback, says 
that he will put a stop to all this. It may be in 
his power to cut down the weed, but without our 
direct aid he can never uproot it, however sincere 
his intention. 

This question of internal banditry might pos- 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 81 

sibly be none of our affair, but how about the 
other runaway horse, the policy of open enmity 
to the United States? Its inception was as 
opportune as the surrender without a fight to the 
military and bids fair to be as far-reaching in its 
disastrous consequences. How did it begin? Go 
back again to Carranza hibernating in silence, 
patience and immobility, watch him feeling with 
his civilian antennae for the danger behind the 
danger and finding it in the bugaboo of the 
Colossus of the North. Here was the unfailing 
elixir which made a Samson of any puny leader 
who could find an excuse for a cry of treason. 
Why not grasp the life-giving cup of Mexican 
popular favor and drink it all? Why not annex to 
himself this source of danger and element of 
strength? Why not become the concrete emblem 
of a national and traditional hatred? 

If actions speak louder than words there can 
be no question whatever as to the fact that Car- 
ranza formulated a definite policy of estrange- 
ment, tried it out, found that it worked beyond his 
wildest hopes, — produced in fact an unexpected 



82 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

miracle in bringing him prowess where he had 
sought only safety. No wonder he followed it 
thenceforth with a ponderous stolidity worthy of 
a better cause. 

What is the sequence of overt actions which 
began with a trifling incident and which through 
our policy of hands off grew to such proportions as 
to inflate Carranza with the idea of establishing 
himself in history as the rock upon which cordial 
relations between Latin and Anglo-Saxon Amer- 
ica were to split? 

Let us start at the arrival of Ambassador 
Fletcher, a diplomat by profession and as such 
almost a sole survivor of the change in our national 
administration, still wearing the laurels of a con- 
quest of the collective heart of Chile, long es- 
tranged against the United States. He was 
appointed on his record to get results. He came 
smiling with a genuine and avowed intention of 
friendship. He wore that smile steadily for two 
years without ever meeting the slightest glimmer 
of response. It was a feat in facial control which 
has never been equaled for endurance on the stage 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 83 

of international relations and forms in itself a 
story of personal interest. 

Fletcher's first constructive move was to enter 
into a gentleman's agreement with General Pablo 
Gonzalez as spokesman whereby the United 
States would release some millions of rounds of 
ammunition long held at the border if the Mexican 
government through the General would agree to 
accept that action as a definite show of friendship 
and use it as a soothing syrup on public opinion. 
To carry out his side of the arrangement the 
Ambassador made a special trip to Washington 
and won his point with the President and the 
State Department only after a hard and pro- 
tracted struggle. The ammunition was released. 
(Incidentally, thisiwas the sole occasion during 
the three years of his mission to Mexico that the 
Ambassador was allowed an interview with the 
President whose personal representative he was 
supposed to be.) 

Now watch Carranza's move because it was 
destined to become his classic lead. He repudiated 
Gonzalez as his formal or informal intermediary 



84 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

and caused Ut to be given out in the press that 
through the wise and powerful efforts of Bonillas, 
the Mexican Ambassador to Washington, the 
rounds of ammunition, property of the Mexican 
government, long unjustly held at the border, had 
been freed and were on their way to the capital. 

The ultimate results of this initial move can 
scarcely be measured in the space allotted, but 
the immediate effects were what opened Car- 
ranza's eyes to the potentialities of a policy 
of continued estrangement from the United States. 
To his mild surprise and General Gonzalez' 
amazement, the General was promptly blotted 
out as a factor in Mexican ciflairs. Automatically 
he became a puppet, a nothing, so that months 
later when with others he waited upon the Presi- 
dent who was about to announce certain cabinet 
appointments, Carranza could cifford to go the 
long length of refusing even to receive him. 
That event announced to the public the birth 
of Carranza as a strong man. He had come out 
of hibernation. With no military force at his 
back he had yet eliminated one of the group of 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 85 

enigmatically smiling generals and sounded a 
warning to those remaining. 

A Mexican general can read the writing on the 
wall with his eyes shut, bandaged and covered 
with a gunny-sack. He knows that for him there 
are seldom two steps between power and a "passing 
by arms" which is the Spanish euphemism for 
being lined up before a firing squad. The poten- 
tially wilful military leaders took thought and with 
every subsequent slap given by Carranza to the 
United States they took more thought and gath- 
ered to the support of the "patriot" until to the 
surprise of every one, himself included, the Su- 
preme Chief was found to have grown up in the 
dark to the stature of his grandiloquent title. To 
the string of the pork-barrel which tied the 
military to him originally he had added the pres- 
tige of becoming the exponent sans pared of the 
national tradition of hatred toward die United 
States, — a hatred which, sifted down, would be 
found to be a genuine flame in the hearts only of a 
loud-mouthed minority which unfortunately sets 
the tone of the nation's printed thought. 



86 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

What were the steps by which he clambered to 
this eminence? They are too numerous for cover- 
ing except with the stride of seven-league boots. 
Three high-lights are enough to illumine the mass 
of lesser affronts such as delays in the issuance of 
exequaturs, refusals of every courtesy to the Em- 
bassy which could be construed as signs of amity, 
expulsion of Americans on thirty-six hours' notice 
and in the face of protests, murders of others with 
the most casual assurances of investigation never 
fulfilled, and open encouragement of German 
propaganda. Such trifles just failed of turning 
Fletcher with his undying smile and patiently ex- 
tended hand of friendship into a perpetual image 
of patience. 

But three breaks can not be passed over so 
lightly. They were outrages to the etiquette of 
common decency which is supposed to govern the 
intercourse of nations not at war. 

One of them was the cynical and hypocritical 
boasting of Carranza in a message to Congress 
that the massacre of American troops at Carrizal 
was the result and the triumph of his orders to the 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 87 

Mexican army to expel Pershing's punitive expedi- 
tion (directed solely against Villa) from Mexican 
soil. This incident of brag aside from its value as 
an illustration of the point at issue, is character- 
istic of one of the longest established of Mexican 
tactics, — the falsifying of events to fit the uses 
of a national pride absurd to the point of childish- 
ness in its assumption of non-existent power. 

Another arose from the sending of a succession 
of sterilized missions to the United States, — ^Nieto, 
Pani, Cabrera; Cabrera, Pani, Nieto. Here also is 
a side-light which exposes Mexican skill at passing 
the buck. It has been said that as a master of the 
toothpick of subterfuge the Mexican has no peer 
and his favorite stroke has been, is and will be the 
sending of unofficial envoys at any given pinch and 
their subsequent repudiation when the apex of 
pressure is past. 

There came a day when. Nieto, blinded by a 
sense of his own growing importance, forgot this 
old rule and took one tentative step on his own 
account. He was in Washington on one of the 
periodic missions which he well knew meant 



88 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

nothing, showed up at the State Department and 
was literally swept oflF his perch of insincerity by 
the outspoken frankness and cordiality with which 
he was met. The informal attitude of our govern- 
ment was one of willingness to negotiate any and 
all differences from a standpoint of generosity 
rather than intrinsic justice. Why not have 
Fletcher up and get to work? What could Nieto, 
a man posing as an envoy, do but consent? The 
Ambassador was summoned post-haste and after 
many hours of labor he and Nieto framed "a 
preamble looking toward a tentative settlement" 
of all acute questions pending between the two 
countries. 

It Is too bad that that document cannot be 
printed here in full as a unique exhibit of the 
lengths to which we were prepared to go in our 
publicly declared policy of showering benefits on 
Mexico and as a categorical answer to the vapid 
pleadings of certain men that we at least experi- 
ment with an attitude of friendship toward 
Mexico. 
What was the fate of the preamble? While it 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 89 

was still in an embryonic stage Nieto awoke to the 
fact that in spite of his chief executive's apparent 
acquiescence by silence, he himself was a fake 
envoy like all his predecessors. He declared that 
negotiations had reached such a point that nothing 
further could be settled at Washington. As a 
consequence Fletcher, still smiling, climbed on the 
train and accompanied Nieto back to Mexico 
City. 

Immediately upon the arrival of the travelers 
the terms of the preamble were published in the 
press. /They were so frank, so reasonable, so 
charged with the spirit of compromise to practical 
ends, so imbued with the new order of open 
diplomacy that a surge of hope rose in the breasts 
of all those who knew to what dazzling heights 
of prosperity the^country might rise under their 
aegis.^^ So profound was this aspiration that its 
explosion on the following day produced a theatri- 
cal, almost a dramatic, anticlimax. Nieto was 
publicly repudiated by official announcement in 
every newspaper of the capital and fell from favor 
never to recover; the tentative agreement was 



90 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

unceremoniously scrapped, torn up without con- 
sideration of any nature, consigned to the waste- 
paper-basket. The action was a scandalous 
affront to the American Ambassador, such a slap 
as leaves no outward mark but brands the spirit 
for a lifetime. 

The most alarming exhibit in Carranza's policy 
of estrangement, however, passed over the Am- 
bassador and struck at the President of the United 
States. Our propaganda committee had arranged 
an excursion of a score of Mexican newspaper men 
to Washington where President Wilson addressed 
them. In spite of the evidence already to hand 
as to the deep-seated malignity of the Mexican 
government, he declared once more that under no 
conceivable circumstance would the United States 
resort to arms for a settlement of any difficulty 
with a weaker nation. The speech, cabled in full 
by the enthusiastic correspondents, was published 
broadcast and produced a remarkable and im- 
mediate impression. 

What was Carranza's countermove? He dug 
out our government's strong note of April 2, 1918, 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 91 

protesting in no uncertain terms against the con- 
fiscation of American oil land titles and which had 
lain unanswered for two months in the Foreign 
Office, Ignoring the formality of notifying the 
Embassy of his intention, he ordered it published 
in the press without comment. Read President 
Wilson's speech, read the note and then take off 
your hat to Carranza. He won, not by a length 
but by a lap. At last there was not a man who 
could read in Mexico who must not perforce 
recognize the patriot, the champion not only of 
his own land but of every other between it and the 
toe of Patagonia. 

Would you not think that by the same token it 
would have become apparent to the White House 
as well as to the world at large that the inevitable 
head-on collision between abstract altruism and a 
concrete fact had occurred? At the price of incon- 
sistency we actually issued one ultimatum to 
Mexico, the note of April 2, 1918, that meant 
business and thereby saved the product of the oil 
fields to the Allies, but apparently this incident 
has failed to teach its true lesson, — namely, that 



92 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

when it came to an absolute showdown Washing- 
ton had to threaten force as a matter of business 
even while it was shouting benevolence from the 
housetops. 

The second paragraph of this chapter was 
devoted to the impatient man of affairs who wants 
to know why and how we are responsible in large 
measure for the chaos in Mexico. Go back and 
read his questions; there is no room to repeat them, 
but here is the answer. There has been only one 
abnormal period in the history of Mexico since it 
attained independence almost exactly a century 
ago. That abnormal period coincided with the 
years of law and order under the Diciz regime. 
The revolutions which have occurred since 1910 
differ only in one respect from the many that pre- 
ceded 1876. They mark the intervention of the 
United States in the internal affairs of Mexico. 

The professional pacifists and press-mongers 
who sling the word "interventionist" at every man 
who is working for a prompt settlement of our 
many outstanding differences with Mexico, lest 
neglect lead us deeper into the mire, are invited to 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 93 

Step back half a dozen years and see where and in 
what an astounding manner intervention origin- 
ally occurred. Mr. Lind, a native of Sweden, 
naturalized an American, who knew no Spanish 
and nothing of Mexican affairs, was chosen as the 
goat on whom we loaded the naive mission of 
proposing to the President of Mexico, already 
recognized as such by several leading powers, that 
he step out and hold an election in which the 
Mexican people should freely exercise their choice 
of an executive, himself barred. 

Had we stopped at barring Huerta from the 
free choice granted his fellow countrymen our 
indiscretion would have remained merely an 
amusing freak in international dealings, but in the 
months which followed we went further. We 
casually gave out certain doctrines which should 
have been gravely pondered. It sounded well to 
announce that we would not recognize in Latin 
America any man who arose to power through 
force. We announced it; apparently with no 
forethought of the absurdities into which such a 
half-baked doctrine would unfailingly lead us. 



94 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

It was only a question of weeks before Mr. 
Bryan was faced with a proposition to accept any 
one of a list of prominent Mexicans who had taken 
part in none of the revolutionary movements on 
foot. What happened? Did he stick to his hap- 
hazard doctrine? I quote from the sworn evidence 
of Mr. W. F. Buckley before the Senate Sub-Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations. "Mr. Bryan thought 
over this for a long time, and then finally told me 
frankly that the American government would 
agree on nobody for provisional President but 
Carranza. I finally asked him, then. If the Amer- 
ican government would be consistent in the policy 
it had announced with regard to Huerta and 
would agree that since Carranza was to be pro- 
visional President he must not be a candidate for 
permanent President, and that the American 
government would not recognize him as such. 
Mr. Bryan said, *No; Carranza must be provi- 
sional President and permanent President.' This 
ended the conference." 

Notice those words, "must be." We assisted 
Carranza to become by force President of Mexico. 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 95 

We seated him as effectually as one picks up a little 
boy and planks him in a chair; only, we failed to 
exact from him a promise to be good. From the 
very start he had given strong evidence of every 
intention not to be good, but President Wilson 
persevered through thick and thin in a blind 
belief that by letting him do as he pleased he would 
ultimately be overwhelmed by magnanimity and 
do as pleased us. I ask you, who have been the 
interventionists and to what an end? 

Concurrently with establishing firmly on its 
feet an oligarchy which for graft and oppression 
of the weak has never been surpassed in the 
history of the New World we abandoned our own 
flesh and blood on a scale which make the ravages 
of the Barbary Pirates against whom we sent our 
first punitive expedition a picayune affair. This 
abandonment is the true overshadowing o^ime of 
the long tragedy of errors of a century of contact 
with Mexico. 

What gave rise to the new doctrine that an 
American alone of all the nationalities of the 
civilized world has no right to protection beyond 



95 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

the limits of his own country? A Republican 
administration had advised Americans living in 
outlying districts in Mexico to gather in the big 
cities for protection until danger had blown over. 
This counsel may have been ill-considered but 
by the very terms in which it was addressed it was 
stamped as provisional. No sane man could or 
did think at the time that a Democratic adminis- 
tration would attempt to found upon it a denial 
of the fundamental principle of liberty upon which 
our government was founded. Nevertheless Pres- 
ident Wilson drew from it the disastrous inspira- 
tion to order over forty thousand Americans to 
abandon outright homes, property and employ- 
ment and return to the United States. 

I will not present here the personal hardships 
and loss arising from that order; I shall only 
depict the spirit in which the proclamation was 
made. It stipulated that it should be published 
broadcast to every one assuming authority in 
Mexico in the most unequivocal terms that the 
fortunes of those Americans who could not possibly 
get away would be vigilantly watched over and that 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 97 

those responsible for the sufferings cind losses of 
Americans would he held to a definite reckoning. 
The italics are mine; the years that have passed 
since the vain boasting took place He at the door 
of the man of broken promises. 

What have those years brought forth? A sea 
of notes couched in like terms and never sustained, 
protesting against an ever-growing stream of 
outrages; murders of Americans, confiscation of 
their rights, destruction of their properties. But 
far greater than this material damage is the 
destruction of the honorable conception of Ameri- 
can character in the mind of every Mexican, high 
or low. They have grown to know us for liars, 
and far from acknowledging our pusillanimity as 
forbearance, they despise us heartily as cowardly 
betrayers of our own flesh and blood. 

Were this betrayal of any avail to Mexico itself 
It might offer ammunition to the international 
pacifist, but the contrary is the case as will be 
proved in the course of this book. Suffice it to say 
here that through a blind and ill-considered inter- 
vention we were responsible for the establishment 



98 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

and continuance of government by banditry in 
Mexico. We might have secured guarantees before 
taking so drastic a plunge. Instead we sent the 
bh'nd in the form of a naturalized Swede into the 
Latin maze and followed the blind into a mire» 

There is a wide-spread reluctance in the United 
States to grasp the nettle of the Mexican situation, 
but we are going to do it sooner or later whether 
we like it or not, the later the harder. We need 
not worry to-day as to the initiation of the project 
so much as to how we may perform this service to 
ourselves, to Mexico and to humanity once and for 
all. We too stand at a parting of the ways no less 
momentous than the crossroads which saw Car- 
ranza take the wrong turning three years ago. 

The case of Jenkins was not settled by the 
release of Jenkins any more than the cases of 
hundreds of murdered Americans have been 
settled by the exchange of a long succession of 
formal notes, all identical save for the variation 
in the names of the victims. With Obregon clam- 
oring for a fresh deal and naively suggesting that 
bygones be bygones, we are at the threshold 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 99 

not of an immediate decision but of such a 
bandying of words as will deafen statesman and 
citizen alike if we do not awake to the fact that the 
fallacies upon which Carranza founded his govern- 
ment by banditry have run away with Mexico. 
They have taken root, they have grown. No 
longer can they fall and wither with the destruc- 
tion of any one man. 

It may be said that Carranza spread an illusion 
of strength. Wrong. No one man can launch a 
whole nation on the road to perdition through 
illusory power alone. It is silly to assume that 
because a man has built for himself a pedestal out 
of the rotten rubble of subornation, evasion, 
casuistry, subterfuge and trickery that the 
pyramid will crash with the downfall of the indi- 
vidual. Carranza has passed away, destroyed by 
the very agencies that made him, bribery and 
and race-hatred, two snowballs rolling down-hill, 
but his handiwork will stand. 

What did we get out of the years during which 
we practised an amazing tolerance, abandoned 
our own flesh and blood, surrendered rights 



lOO: ;IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

held dear through all our previous history and put 
up with insult piled on injury? Was it peace? No. 
It was a country in chaos; a government all altru- 
ism, idealism, attorneyism from the lips out and 
carrying the torch of arson, banditry and oppres- 
sion in the active hand. Led disastrously along 
the road of enmity it grew to new proportions, for 
strength is strength whether its source be evil or 
good. Eighty per cent, of Mexico is naturally 
peaceful, thirteen of her fifteen millions are in- 
capable of hating Americans save through sug- 
gestion. That suggestion was supplied through the 
spectacle of Carranza immune in the face of our 
lazy and self-defeating benevolence and that sug- 
gestion has already reached such lengths that the 
first thought of a peon on coming across a strayed 
American is to kidnap or murder him. 

Mexico under Carranza developed not so much 
into a sick people as into a national pervert, 
a potential monster bom out of social wedlock 
and nursed by our negligence into repulsive vigor. 
With the assistance and consent of some powerful 
internal element we must stem and bend its 



GOVERNMENT BY BANDITRY 101 

spirit, lash it to some permanent and basic 
girder which will guide it wiUy-nilly into the 
path of national and international righteousness. 
The need for that basic girder, its nature and mode 
of application will be the subject of further chap- 
ters. In the meantime, forget that Mexico was 
once a yapping cur. Take down the old placard, 
"Beware of the dog;" put up the new sign, "Look 
out for the knife at your back." 



CHAPTER IV 

ROBBERY BY DECREE 

Imagine that a student of political economy 
has been a recluse for ten years, hand him the 
Mexican constitution of 1917 and all the printed 
edicts of the Carranza regime, suppose that he 
reads them. What would be his justifiable im- 
pression? He would have to admit that the 
millennium had arrived and that the perfect state, 
the complete republic, the final consummation of 
the rights of man, was in full swing south of the 
Rio Grande. That would be a perfectly logical 
conclusion, yet the most casual observer of actual 
conditions knows that they gave the lie to any such 
conviction from inference. 

Right here we come up against the fortress of 
the altruists, pacifists, dreamers, self-determina- 
tionists and internationals who find an almost 
inexhaustible stock of ammunition in the publicly 
declared principles and intentions of the Mexican 
Constitutionalist government. It is not their 
102 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 103 

business to square these declared principles and 
intentions with the astonishing contradiction of 
the results actually obtained. They sail content- 
edly on a sea of print and, the deeper that sea, the 
easier it is to befog the public mind in regard to 
genuine issues. 

It is the affair, however, of every man who 
wishes to sum up for himself the problem of our 
confused relations with Mexico to get a clear 
mental picture of this tremendous contradiction; 
a state apparently organized along lines of perfec- 
tion which is simultaneously the greatest existing 
national seat of oppression, robbery, murder, 
disorder and governmental chaos. How shall we 
go about the painting of that picture? By plung- 
ing at once to the fundamental paradox of the 
Latin mind which turns out laws with the ease and 
perfection of a machine producing sausages and 
then reverses itself, devours its own young, and 
returns to the position known as "as you were," 
once more completely lawless. 

It is unnecessary to support that statement by 
specific illustration. Read any twenty of the 



104 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

manifestos issued by successful and unsuccessful 
revolutionists in Mexico during the past century 
up to and including the declaration of Obregon, 
and you will find an extraordinary similarity in 
the assertion of high and progressive aims (notably 
with reference to the division of lands and the 
redemption of the peon). It will also be found 
that heretofore all these grandiloquent programmes 
have subsequently gone by the board along the 
self-same road of oligarchial graft and govern- 
mental peculation. 

We are not especially concerned here with this 
endless repetition of history however illuminating 
it might prove to died-in-the-wool supporters of 
self-determination, but we are concerned in point- 
ing out certain distinctive features imposed by 
the late Mexican government on an age-long pro- 
cedure. It is just as well to line up these high- 
lights in plain English. First, the constitution of 
1917 which raised the hair on the heads of all con- 
servatives and reactionaries is not really a terri- 
fying document; justly enforced it would be found 
to embody much that is admirable along progres- 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 105 

sive lines of national conservation. Second, the 
opportunities for such just enforcement were 
exceptional m the case'of Carranza but he allowed 
himself to be diverted by a motive which was in 
direct opposition to success and which incidentally 
threatened incalculable damage to the United 
States and its Allies during the World War. Third, 
he adopted, not by printed declaration but by 
action, the principle of robbing the foreigner estab- 
lished in Mexico to a specific end. 

To begin with, let us put our fundamental 
paradox on a clean plate and look at it. The hy- 
brid Mexican is a wonderful law-maker. Let us ac- 
cept that fact at face value without tracing it back 
to its Roman source. Just where do his admirable 
laws go wrong? At the very joint of enactment and 
execution. They are stillborn. Why? Because 
the dynamic germ has been eliminated from the 
Latin's make-up. He is a breeder of ideas no 
longer capable of Imbuing his offspring with an 
active principle. Every educated Mexican knows 
the statement to be a fact; Obregon knows it. 

Here we have the kernel of the so-called Latin 



106 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

American enmity toward the United States. In 
the case of Mexico it is not strictly enmity; it is 
hurt pride arising from the recognition deep in the 
heart of every intelligent Mexican that he can 
trade and dicker with the best of us and come out 
top dog, but that he can establish no major indus- 
try, no constructive factor in the progress of his 
country requiring an infusion of dynamic energy, 
without borrowing that infusion from another 
race. He realizes that the material salvation of 
his country lies in foreign money controlled by 
foreigners and that ultimate spiritual salvation can 
come only with the far-off domination of new 
blood through immigration. Show him that this 
double absorption would bring happiness and 
prosperity to a score of millions of his compa- 
triots and his individual pride will still rise to 
choke him because no man however craven can 
be expected to admire the setting of his own sun. 
These are deep waters but we must paddle in 
them to appreciate wherein lay the greatness and 
the downfall of Porfirio Diaz. In his day he was 
a giant and attracted giants. His day is past and 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 107 

the rise of another dictator, even if he were equally 
strong and level-headed, would bring only tem- 
porary alleviation to a chaotic condition. In this 
connection it is just as well to state that this book 
is in no sense reactionary. It does not advocate 
a return to any golden age but it does aim at 
an enforcement of justice by means well within 
our power and still in line with the progressive 
principles which the Carranza regime blared to 
the world at large and consistently betrayed at 
home. 

Returning to Diaz, his greatness arose from the 
fact that he accepted frankly the need of foreign 
initiative for the material redemption of his 
country. He opened his arms wide to foreign 
capital and enterprise and once embarked on that 
policy the protection of life and property through- 
out the length and breadth of Mexico became a 
mere corollary, a matter of course. For a quarter 
of a century there was no country on the face of 
the globe where constructive forces found greater 
security, fairer treatment or a broader field. 

The response was immediate and its scope tre- 



108 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

mendous. The history of the twenty-five years 
during which American capital alone poured a 
billion dollars into Mexico is an epic too long for 
inclusion here, but the annals of foreign develop- 
ment show no cleaner page than this story of 
the Industrial birth of a nation. I said that 
Diaz attracted giants. They did not know they 
were giants; the men who called them by their 
first names, slapped them on the back and bor- 
rowed money from them probably thought of 
them as either rough-necks or highbrows, but to 
those who look back now down the short vista of 
fifteen years their true stature is beginning to be 
revealed. 

They have a monument in the size of the wreck 
which followed their passing. The patched rem- 
nants of rolling-stock which have survived eight 
years of persistent train-dynamiting, the vermin- 
infested and ragged coaches which once were 
palatial, the industries destroyed, the silent mills, 
flooded mines and looted banks which dot the 
length and breadth of Mexico to-day, loom above 
the dead level of a destroying flood of organized 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 109 

graft and robbery by governmental decree and 
give the true measure of the heyday of Diaz and 
of the men who were its direct product. 

What killed Diaz? An overdose of success 
along a single line of ambition. He was the lonely 
prophet of the New Pragmatism In his country. 
In surrendering to the crying need for foreign 
initiative In Its constructive affairs he uncon- 
sciously grafted practical and efficient buds on the 
old stock of what up to his time was a completely 
sterile though loud-mouthed Idealism. He was 
so taken up with putting Mexico on the map 
Industrially and commercially that his programme 
along that single line not only outdistanced equally 
important subsidiary reforms but fairly ran away 
with him. In his old age he was no longer the 
master of his destiny; he was being driven. 

The best Illustration available out of many 
showing the phenomenal success of Diaz and also 
giving an example of the heavy clouds which 
overshadowed his downfall Is to be found In the 
history of the Mexican banks.* What American 

• For a comprehensive and UF^to-date review of this subject, see 



1 10 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

in or out of Mexico can believe to-day that the 
Bankers' Panic of 1907 found that country with a 
better banking system than our own? That ex- 
ceptional position was largely due to American 
and other foreign investments as Is demonstrated 
by the figures showing the advance of resources 
during the years of Industrial activity. 

In 1897 the paid capital and surplus of Mexican 
banks of Issue was only $23,500,000 and their total 
resources amounted to a little over $69,500,000; 
by 1909 these figures had gone over $117,000,000 
for capital and surplus and the resources of the 
various Institutions of credit had passed $380,- 
500,000. During the same period these banks 
had reduced unpaid capital from $6,470,000 to 
$509,650 and showed an Increase of paid capital to 
$59,400,000 as against $18,025,000 and a reserve 
fund of $25,654,047 In 1909 as contrasted with 
$3,126,131 In 1897. In the ten years from 1899 
to 1909 the auxiliary banks Increased their paid-in 
capital from $3,000,000 to $23,500,000 and their 



Present and Past Banking in Mexico, by W. F. McCaleb. Harper Bros., 
to which volume I am indebted for many facts and figures. 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 111 

reserve funds from nothing to $3,444,058, their 
total resources being published at $64,187,516. 

These figures are sufficient to give to the lay 
mind a graphic picture of the reflex action of a 
tremendous industrial boom on Mexican finance, 
but, as a matter of fact, they illustrate as well a 
period of dangerous kite-flying and stock-jobbing 
on the part of certain of the banks. Limantour, 
the greatest of the giants who gathered around 
Diaz and the watch-dog of the nation's resources, 
was the first to sound the alarm and on February 
tenth of 1908 wrote a letter to all the chartered 
banks summoning their representatives for a con- 
ference. On June nineteenth of the same year the 
national congress supported him by enacting in 
ioio his bill for the reform of the banking system. 
It is a matter of great regret that the revolution 
should have intervened before this movement 
could be got fairly under way. 

Summing up the situation at the close of the 
Diaz regime as it affects American interests we 
find two outstanding features: (1) a billion 
American dollars had been drawn into Mexico 



1 12 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

and were represented by the soundest of assets 
such as railways, producing mines, smelters, foun- 
dries, mills, factories, various industries, planta- 
tions, ranches and city real estate; (2) the finan- 
cial system showed distinct inflation and while 
some of the banks were intrinsically sound, others 
were so extended as to justify the appointment of 
receiverships. We were directly responsible for 
the first of these conditions and may be proud of 
the record; with the second, we had nothing to do 
beyond the isolated outright failure of a private 
American banking concern. 

Between the downfall of Diaz and the final 
advent of Carranza there occurred only two 
administrations which influenced the course of 
Mexican finance. We may eliminate the usurpa- 
tions of the machinery of government by Villa, 
Zapata, and Obregon during his first occupation of 
Mexico City, but we cannot pass over the terms 
of Madero and Huerta without leaving a blank 
which must be filled to give an idea of the con- 
ditions which confronted and still confront 
the Constitutionalist government. Madero's ad- 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 113 

ministration found an actual cash balance in the 
national treasury of $32,000,000, converted it mto 
a deficit and obtained authorization from Congress 
to float a loan of £20,000,000. Huerta inherited 
the deficit and the authorization and promptly 
took advantage of the latter to place six million 
of the twenty-million-pound loan with Paris 
bankers who held an option for the remainder 
which they subsequently refused to take up.* As 
a consequence Huerta placed certain amounts in 
New York and then forced various bond issues on 
the local banks until they had absorbed $31,827,- 
879 against which they issued notes for a like 
amount. 

According to law they should have held a fifty 
per cent, metallic reserve against this emission,but 
in the terms of a special edict by Huerta under 
date of January 7, 1914, the Department of Fi- 
nance could authorize banks to increase their cir- 
culation up to three times their holdings. Even 
this concession was of no avail during a panic when 

* The most reliable figures give the actual distribution of thi« twenty> 
million-pound loan as follows: French group. 45. 1 25%; German group. 
19%: English group. 19%; American group. 11.875%; Banco Nficional 
de Mexico. 5%. 



114 IS M-EXlCO WORTH' SAVITMG 

specie had all but disappeared from circulation and 
it was already impossible for the banks to adjust 
themselves. They were in a bad way and knew it. 

It is necessary to point out just here where all 
this talk of banks and banking touches American 
interests or the career of Carranza with reference 
to the United States. As regards the jfirst of these 
points, the Huerta bonds are the one national 
obligation which the Mexican government has 
declared it will never pay; consequently it is of 
profit to the investing public to know just how the 
loan came to be issued and on what authority. 
As to the second, note that the banks were forced 
by the Huerta government to exceed their issues. 
This point is of vital connection with Carranza's 
policy of robbery by decree as will be shown in the 
course of this chapter. 

Carranza, as has been previously stated, came 
finally into power through the arbitrary support 
of the United States, but his ultimate advent was 
hailed by no paean of joy on the part of the insti- 
tutions of credit of his country. Why? Because 
as early as December of 1913 his attitude toward 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 115 

them had been set forth in a circular making oner- 
ous demands on the banks situated in the territory 
which he had overrun. By February of 1914 his 
Constitutionalist government had issued Circular 
No. 8 taking over the Nogales branch of the Banco 
Nacional and that of the Banco de Sonora, the 
parent Banco de Sonora and the branches of the 
Banco Nacional in HermosIUa, the Banco Minero 
and the agency of the Banco Occidental, all of 
whose debtors were ordered to suspend payment 
until the institutions could be liquidated. 

I will admit at once that Carranza's position as 
regards finance when he came definitely into power 
was of a trying nature, but It was not desperate 
for one sole reason, — in the long run he could have 
had the support of the United States. He floated 
into the capital on a sea of fiat money, one issue 
after another of which depreciated at such a pre- 
cipitous rate that panic became the normal atmos- 
phere for government as well as for the business 
public. Not all of this "say-so" money was of 
Constitutionalist origin. It has been estimated 
that as many as two hundred separate and distinct 



1T6 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

issues were scattered broadcast by one authority 
and another over the length and breadth of the 
country, but we are not directly interested here 
in the absorbing chapter of frenzied paper finance 
in Mexico. What we need to know is the condi- 
tion of the banks at Carranza's assumption of 
power and what he did to them. 

W. F. McCaleb in his authoritative book sums 
up the dark side of the picture as follows: "While 
we are casting up balances at the end of 1915, we 
may not overlook the Caja de Prestamos, which 
came into existence in 1908. . . . Here as per- 
haps nowhere else, the criticism holds true that 
the banks were operated in Mexico largely in the 
interest of the parties in control. It is a pathetic 
commentary on the high purposes of President 
Diciz to show that the Caja de Prestamos, which 
was expected to relieve multitudes of farmers, 
restricted its loan operations to a few conspicuous 
haciendados and real-estate speculators of the 
Republic." 

Now take the reverse picture from the same 
authority. "It doubtless is true that some of the 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 117 

banks were badly managed. It is, furthermore, 
certain that some of them had made loans which 
would have worked out losses even in normal 
times; but that all the banks were in this category 
is, of course, an absurdity. And the very fact 
that the government made no effort to distinguish 
between good and bad institutions is a blunder 
from which there can be no escape. According to 
its own statement, as published officially, three 
banking establishments were solvent and three 
had suffered only impairments of capital. Why, 
then, should these institutions have been closed?" 
This quotation carries ^us ahead of our story. 
When and how did Carranza wipe out the banking 
system of Mexico? The Huerta emissions, nine 
in number and totaling £17,320,029, (out of which 
sum the banks in Mexico had been bled to the 
tune of £11,197,708), had dealt a terrific shock. 
The blow fell on a banking system that was al- 
ready assailed by the hardest of general condi- 
tions; it laid that system low but could not kilHt. 
For this purpose a bludgeon was required and it 
was formed out of the following Carranza decrees. 



lis; IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

(I) Decree^of September 16, 1916, by which 
the concessions of the Banks of Issue were can- 
celled and a term of sixty days was granted them 
for raising their metallic reserve to an amount 
equal to that of their circulating bills. A Board of 
Confiscation (Consejo de Incautacion) was ap- 
pointed for each and every one of the banks and, 
finally, it was ordered that no operations should 
be made without the authorization of the Depart- 
ment of Finance. It was naturally impossible for 
the banks to increase their reserves under the 
terms above mentioned for, besides sixty days be- 
ing a preposterously short term for such an opera- 
tion, the paper currency circulating at the time had 
completely withdrawn from the market the metal- 
lic currency and even the bank bills. The govern- 
ment itself could not furnish the necessary specie 
but even assuming the possibility of obtaining the 
metallic medium, the terms of the decree, forbid- 
ding every operation without government author- 
ization, made an ironical farce of the exorbitant 
demand. 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 119 

(2) The Decree of December 14, 1916, based 
on the regulations of Number 1, (which could by 
no stretch of possibilities be complied with) deter- 
mined the liquidation of the banks. 

(3) The Decree of April 6, 1917, stipulated 
that the Banks of Issue be liquidated by the 
Department of Finance and that should it be 
found in the course of such liquidation that any 
bank was unable to balance its liabilities against 
assets, the liquidation should be carried out under 
the laws governing bankruptcies! It is beside the 
mark to point out that the value of much of the 
collateral which might have enabled certain banks 
to make a fair showing under this decree had been 
deliberately wiped out by the action of the 
government. 

The Machiavellian wording of these decrees, 
taken as a whole, is a masterpiece of obfuscation 
intended to confuse the simple mind intent only 
on discovering where lies justice and bewildered 
by any argument, however logical, which results in 
a conclusion that "mine is thine." How will the 
reader grasp the magnitude of Carranza's clubbing 



120 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

operation better than by thinking of his own local 
bank, its capital, resources and treatment by the 
authorities, and then turn to the tragic fate of 
the Banco de Londres y Mexico. 

I choose this bank as an example because it was 
in no sense a Mexican concern except in that it 
operated under a Mexican charter. The group of 
its stockholders was made up of the best French 
and Spanish elements in Mexico, France and 
Spain, its pianager was a Britisher, it was a model 
of modern banking principles and owned its own 
splendid plant. Now notice the figures. It was 
the second largest Bank of Issue in Mexico with a 
fully paid up capital of $10,750,000, a reserve of 
$2,992,500 and bills in circulation to the amount 
of $18,721,141. Its published statement of July, 
1916, showed cash on hand amounting to $10,406,- 
065. of which over $5,000,000 was held m gold and 
silver specie and $4,250,000 in actual gold and 
silver bullion. 

Why should Carranza have swept such an 
institution along with others of good record into 
the discard? Was it because of the sins of their 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 121 

colleagues or because he wished to establish some 
ideal system of finance still undreamed or because 
he needed to clear the boards for a single central 
and national bank of emission? You can find 
wordy support for any one of these answers but 
the admission of Carranza's Chief of the Depart- 
ment of Banking to the effect that the Carranza 
government looted $24,906,108 in actual cash 
from the vaults of the unhappy banks describes an 
action which cries aloud for justice above the din 
of high-sounding official explanations. "He need- 
ed the money," is the true answer. 

As though it were bent on exhibiting itself 
before the world of finance in a ridiculous light, 
the Constitutionalist government prepared an act 
under date of December 13, 1918, setting forth in 
great detail the rules for the establishment of (1) a 
single national bank of emission, (2) mortgage 
banks, (3) auxiliary banks, (4) agricultural banks, 
(5) petroleum banks, (6) banks of deposit. This act 
was a gem but it was nevertheless withdrawn, 
ostensibly because it was realized that the country 
was by no means ready to swallow another dose of 



122 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

fiat money. The ludicrous reality was a bird of 
quite another feather. The clauses stipulating 
that all capital stock was to be fully paid up In 
advance and that every bank was to hold fifty 
per cent, of Its deposits In cash proved too much 
for the sobriety of a public before the spectacle of a 
frankly thieving government still thickly bespat- 
tered with stolen jam. 

What Is the sum total of the situation to-day? 
Mexican finance Is still limping along under the 
moratoriums established In the far-gone days of 
Huerta; Mexican credit has been steadily dis- 
credited; Mexican domestic and foreign obligations 
are still at a standstill In deferment; Mexico Is 
completely stripped of a national banking system 
of any kind whatever, 

"If these things are true," you ask, "how ac- 
count for the great volume of business we are doing 
with Mexico?'* 

The answer to that is that foreign business In 
the sense of trade does not require a whole banking 
system but only that least productive of banking 
attributes which Is devoted to the manipulations 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 123 

of exchange. The private institutions which are 
carrying on this branch and this branch alone of 
financial activity in Mexico are called banks only 
by courtesy. They are making money and are 
enabling others to make money only as agencies of 
exchange, pure and simple. They back no enter- 
prise, carry no loans, insure no construction, open 
no credits, and even refuse deposits except under 
specific restrictions as to responsibility. Living 
under a sword of Damocles the credit Institutions 
of Mexico have decided to do without a neck. 

Having witnessed the gutting of the nation's 
institutions of credit by governmental decree let 
us turn to the Mexican constitution of May, 1917, 
fathered by Carranza, and examine It not only for 
the eflFect it is bearing on our relations with Mexico 
but also with a view to tracing the progress of 
Carranza as an individual along the path of delib- 
erate enmity toward the United States. As was 
stated at the commencement of this chapter, the 
latest Mexican magna charta, if justly enforced, 
would be found to contain much that is admirable 
along progressive lines of national conservation. 



124 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

The reader is invited to hold in mind that quali- 
fying clause, "(f justly enforced.'' Of the one 
hundred and thirty-six articles which make up the 
new constitution only four need be discussed. 

Article 33 contains the following clause: "The 
Executive shall have the exclusive right to expel 
from the Republic forthwith, and without judicial 
process, any foreigner whose presence he may 
deem inexpedient." Read that over and see if 
you can devise any wording which would make the 
autocratic power granted more absolute. Its 
victims have no recourse whatever beyond the 
sense of justice of whoever happens to be President 
of Mexico. Of what avail has this dependence 
upon fair play been to Americans during Carran- 
za's tenure of office? 

I know of three cases of Americans expelled 
from Mexico under this clause since May of 1917. 
The first was a merchant and land-owner who had 
been established in Mexico for thirty years and 
was deported through the influence of his Mexican 
rivals in business on the pretext that he had con- 
formed with the Enemy Trading Act of the United 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 125 

States to the detriment of certain firms under its 
ban. The second was that of a correspondent of 
the Associated Press who was arrested in Mexico 
City and shipped on the long journey to the border 
with no preparation whatever and in circumstances 
which made of his deportation an outrage unneces- 
sarily brutal and indecent. His oflFense was the 
filing with the censor of a message covering a point 
of fact which happened to show the ruling power 
m an unfavorable light. The third was that of a 
mild chemist, startled out of a humdrum existence 
with his Mexican wife and a child, neither of whom 
spoke a word of English, by the accusation of 
having supplied a bomb to bandits. The fact 
that the true culprit surrendered himself to the 
authorities did not save the chemist; the edict for 
his expulsion had been issued. 

Every one of these three cases brought forth 
the vehement protest and appeal of the American 
Embassy not only without avail but with a cynical 
denial of fair play which seemed to joy in the 
opportunity to snub our representative and give 
him a triple bath in well-worn and unctuou§ 



126 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

phrases already grown soapy to the touch through 
long usage. Every one of the three cases repre- 
sented a gross miscarriage of justice, robbery of 
personal liberty by decree, and, taken in the light 
of other Carranzista interpretations of the new 
laws, they give weight to the contention that the 
extraordinarily drastic phrasing of Article 33 was 
part and parcel of a project to make life miserable 
for Americans in Mexico. 

Article 72 of the Mexican constitution of 1857 
provided that, "The Congress shall have power to 
promulgate mining and commercial codes which 
shall be binding throughout the Republic." Under 
this authorization the Mexican mining law of 
November 22, 1884, stipulated that "petroleum 
and gaseous springs, are the exclusive property 
of the owner pi the land, who may therefore 
develop and enjoy them, without the formality of 
entry or specia adjudication." The mining law 
of November 25, 1909, under the scime constitu- 
tion stipulated as follows: "Art. 2. The following 
substances are the exclusive property of the owner 
of the soil: I. — Ore bodies or deposits of mineral 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 127 

fuels, of whatever form or variety. 11. — ^Ore 
bodies or deposits of bituminous substances." 

Now read the following excerpt from the con- 
stitution of May, 1917, Article 27, which is too 
long for more than the most cursory examination 
here. "In the Nation is vested direct ownership of 
all minerals or substances which in veins, layers, 
masses, or beds constitute deposits whose nature is 
diflFerent from the components of the land, such 

as solid mineral fuels; 

petroleum and all hydro-carbons — solid, liquid 
or gaseous." To complete the vicious circle, add 
to the above the following clause from Article 14 of 
the constitution of May, 1917. "'No law shall he 
given retroactive effect to the prejudice of any person 
whatsoever" 

Consider that in reliance upon the mining laws 
duly executed under the constitution of 1857, 
American companies purchased and leased petro- 
leum tracts in Mexico and in good faith sank 
$200,000,000 in this enterprise alone; consider 
that no American companies are developing oil in 
Mexico except on privately-owned property and 



128 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

that no American company enjoys rights to drill in 
any land acquired by gift or concession from any 
Mexican government, read again the word-for- 
word quotations from Mexican national docu- 
ments given above and square, if you can, justice 
against the edicts of Carranza, the Individual, 
ordering the confiscation of all American-owned oil 
tracts in Mexico, — robbery by decree on a royal 
scale. 

Common sense tells you that his pretension was 
absurd. It would be to-day but was it absurd at 
the time he conceived it? Look back with me and 
think. The German drive which occurred in the 
early spring of 1918 was persistently rumored in 
Mexico months before it took place. American se- 
cret service agents on the track of other matters re- 
ported time and again that Carranza considered 
himself to be in possession of convincing assurance 
that the balance of the war would be turned def- 
initely for the Germans by May of 1 9 1 8. We know 
now how nearly good were the reasons for that 
assurance, and, knowing that, does it mean any- 
thing to you that Carranza issued his famous 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 129 

confiscatory decree in February of 1918 and in the 
same month sent a large contigent of troops under 
General Lopes de Lara to the oil fields? 

To the members of the highest naval and 
shipping circles who know how vital was the con- 
tinued supply of Mexican fuel oil to the success of 
the United States and its associates in the World 
War, these facts had and have a deep significance. 
Against apparently overwhelming economic argu- 
ments for at least a neutrality benevolent toward 
the cause of the Allies, Carranza had stuck con- 
sistently to the strictest application of a published 
"paper neutrality" toward all belligerents but, 
wherever it was possible to do so without incurring 
actual danger, had shown favor to the German 
cause. His essays in favoritism grew bolder as 
what, he was convinced, was to be the day of Ger- 
man victory approached and culminated in the 
expulsion of the editor of EI Universaly the lead- 
ing Mexican daily and a whole-hearted supporter 
of the allied cause. 

Why did shipping experts worry about Car- 
ranza's confiscatory decree of February 19, 1918, 



130 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

in connection with his frequent propounding of 
the tenets and duties of neutrality? Because they 
had reason to believe that as soon as circumstances 
on the western front justified the risk he intended 
to seize the oil fields for the nation and then declare 
that being the property of the nation and the 
nation in turn being neutral, no oil could thence- 
forth be supplied to any belligerent to the detri- 
ment of another. 

It was this realization which rang the alarm in 
the halls of the Department of State at Washing- 
ton and forced it under date of April 2, 1918, to 
address such words as the following to the Mexican 
government. "The United States cannot ac- 
quiesce In any procedure ostensibly or nominally 
in the form of taxation or the exercise of eminent 
domain, but really resulting in the confiscation of 
private property and arbitrary deprivation of 

vested rights In the absence of the 

establishment of any procedure looking to the 
prevention of spoliation of American citizens. . . 
It becomes the function of the Govern- 
ment of the United States most earnestly and 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 131 

respectfully to call the attention of the Mexican 
Government to the necessity which may arise to 
impel it to protect the property of its citizens." 

Fine words and vain promise! Add one to the 
family of executive lies which have been fathered 
during the long years that have passed since 
President Wilson published broadcast to all assum- 
ing authority in Mexico that the fortunes of 
Americans would be vigilantly watched over and 
that those responsible for their sufferings and 
losses would be held to a definite reckoning! 

The effect of our surprisingly strong note of 
April 2, 1918, was two-fold. To begin with it 
stalemated, as it was intended to do, any attempt 
by Carranza to stop for the benefit of Germany all 
export of oil. You would think that that result 
would carry with it an abandonment by the 
Mexican government of its confiscatory policy. 
It might have^ had it not been for ourselves. To 
his own astonishment Carranza was to learn in 
the months that followed that we had only re- 
sumed in this note our lately acquired practise of 
talking loud about justice and subsequently sub- 



132 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

mitting to every form of national indignity and 
individual outrage. The palliatives which have 
been secured to the drastic decrees of Carranza 
affecting oil holdings have been acquired not by 
our government but by private effort and group 
rebellion. 

Article 27 of the new constitution has given 
rise to another important branch of the enterprise 
of robbery by decree. One of its clauses directs 
the Congress and State legislatures to enact 
laws for the purpose of carrying out the division of 
large landed estates and stipulates that the owners 
shall be bound to receive bonds of a special issue 
to guarantee the payment of the property ex- 
propriated. On the face of it that sounds reason- 
able and in accord with the most advanced views 
on national conservation; but think a minute. You 
have a tract of land for which you paid actual cash 
under the best possible title secured by the laws of 
the country at the time of purchase. It is pro- 
posed to divide that land among the penniless 
members of the nearest community, in itself an 
admirable project. But what do you get in ex- 



ROBBERY BY DECREE 133 

change? A basket of waste-paper backed by 
Federal and State governments which are already 
flagrantly in default to creditors in almost every 
civilized country on the face of the globe. 

Some of these agrarian laws are already being 
used as a lever to pry loose the unwilling dollar of 
land-owners and several American investors have 
been heavy sufferers, but suffice it to p)oint out 
here that the application of the regulations govern- 
ing the subdivision of lands furnishes an excellent 
example of how the altruistic laws of the Mexican 
actually work out in practise. In many cases a 
local board is entrusted with their enforcement. 
I have yet to hear of such a board in Mexico which 
is not amenable to bribery. As a consequence the 
proprietor who is on the job is subjected merely to 
buying himself clear of the law. What would be 
blackmail in any other country, in Mexico, to the 
great misfortune of its masses, is daily bread to 
the party in power. 

Summing up this rapid review of the confisca- 
tory aspect of Carranza's Constitutionalist govern- 
ment, what have we for our pains? The knowl- 



134 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

edge that we need not blush for the manner in 
which we contributed over a billion dollars to the 
industrial birth of Mexico; the conviction that 
bad faith, ill-will and malicious intent were 
at the bottom of Carranza's open abandonment of 
the road to peace with the United States, and the 
well-founded assumption that there has been a 
concerted action on the part of the authorities of 
the Constitutionalist party, still in power in Mex- 
ico though now headed by Obregon, to drive 
American enterprise from its territories even if in 
so doing they cut the nose to spite the face of 
their own distracted country. 



CHAPTER V 

WHY ARMENIA 

It is less than eighteen months since our former 
Ambassador to Turkey, lately nominated to the 
post at Mexico City, made the statement that 
"the best thing that could happen to Turkey 
would be to be under military occupation of some 
Allied country for ten years; if this is not done we 
will see existing there such conditions as now 
prevail in Mexico." Mr. Morgenthau went on to 
suggest that Turkey be placed temporarily under 
a protectorate of the Allies or of America. 

It is only a matter of weeks since Europe and 
many Americans were discussing the pros and 
cons of mandataries for the United States in 
Armenia, Africa and equidistant points. Have 
you forgotten how to laugh? If not, doesn't it 
amuse you to be told that if we do not take 
definite action on the other side of the world, 
conditions there will become as messy as those on 
our own doorstep during seven years? 
135 



136 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

The American public mind is long-suffering, 
easily led by constituted authority but not 
easily rushed into demanding action from such 
authority. When our troops were about to land 
in Vera Cruz in 1914 the President appealed to 
Congress in the following terms: "I therefore 
come to ask your approval that I should use the 
armed forces of the United States in such ways, 
and to such an extent, as may be necessary to 
obtain from General Huerta and his adherents the 
fullest recognition of the rights and dignity of the 
United States." The Congress replied within 
forty-eight hours, "The President is justified in the 
employment of the armed forces of the^United 
States to enforce his demand for unequivocal 
amends for certain affronts and indignities com- 
mitted against the United States." 

Was there any full-throated protest from the 
American people against this leadership and its 
possible consequences? On the contrary. There 
was a wide-spread feeling of satisfaction that at 
last a spring-cleaning, too long delayed, had been 



WHY ARMENIA 137 

got under way, and everybody settled down com- 
fortably to undergo the stirring up of a little dust 
in order to clear a large accumulation of rubbish 
and attain the lasting peace of a house in order. 

What happened? The President had gained the 
impression from one of his personal emissaries who 
by race and training was as far removed from the 
inner workings of the Latin as is the North from 
the South pole, that once our forces landed in 
Vera Cruz and lifted the standard against Huerta, 
hordes of Mexicans would flock to its support. 
It would be a peaceful occupation. It is diflScult to 
conceive of any man, however intent on ignoring 
natural laws, persuading himself that if you kick 
your foot into an ant-hill even with the best of 
intentions the ants will get behind and push. 
Nevertheless, the fact stands. 

Nobody who really knows Mexico will deny 
that there is a large conservative element in that 
country which prays diligently for the applica- 
tion in one way or another of the strong hand of 
the United States toward the permanent settle- 
ment of its internal affairs, but the very intelligence 



138 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

which influences this considerable body of men 
leads them to keep their prayers dark. Even 
under the most favorable auspices they would not 
dare acknowledge in public the conviction which 
holds sway in their innermost hearts. Out of 
self-respect, self-conceit and self-preservation as 
individuals, if for no other reason, they are bound 
to resist openly what they secretly desire. 

This truth, widely known to all but our Chief 
Executive in 1914, led the administration into a 
bog. Much to its own consternation it found itself 
in the face of an alternative which, put concisely, 
read as follows: make war or crawl. It had had 
no intention of making war. It was not prepared 
to make war. It had been merely engaged in the 
game of playing one mental attitude against 
another and as soon as real blood began to flow, 
it halted in dismay. In the face of the full 
authorization of Congress, the tacit, matter-of- 
course approval of the vast majority of the 
American people, and the demands of the press 
that Funston's troops be ordered to advance on 
Mexico City, the administration seized on the 



WHY ARMENIA 139 

pretext of an international conference, — and 
crawled. 

Some of the slime of that bog still clings to us 
as a nation. If it were only that we did not get 
unequivocal or any other amends for "certain 
affronts and indignities committed against the 
United States," we could pass the incident up and 
try to forget it along with the ill-fated Pershing 
expedition. But in the light of subsequent events 
we cannot afford to do that. Why? Because we 
are only now beginning to realize that the vacilla- 
tions of 1914 were disastrous far beyond their 
apparent range. 

These vacillations laid bare the hypocrisy which 
says one thing on theory and reverses itself in the 
face of hard facts; they inaugurated the so-called 
policy of "hands off," whatever the provocation; 
they persuaded the ignorant Mexican that we 
were really as weak as his leaders asserted and 
convinced the leaders that they could go the 
limit; they disappointed the American people who 
fell into apathy at the loss of a chance to start the 
Mexican machine on a straight track and, worst of 



140 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

all at the present juncture of world affairs, they 
planted the seed of ridicule among the too-hopeful 
provisions of the project for a league of nations. 

With Mexico surrendered absolutely into our 
sphere of influence by Great Britain and France, 
the two countries most involved next to the 
United States, we were gravely called upon to 
consider mandataries in Turkey and Africa when, 
after seven years, we had been unable to stay either 
by negotiation or the employment of pressure or 
the application of the golden rule, the outright 
and avowed Bolshevism inaugurated under our 
very noses. 

What thoughtful American brought face to 
face with the reign across our border of a corrupt 
oligarchy carrying in its wake lasting benefit to 
none and misery to millions, spurning friendship, 
disavowing every international usage, living by 
blackmail, sustaining and sustained by banditry, 
countenancing murder as a means to undermining 
the prestige of the foreigner and daily denying its 
own guarantees to life and property, can restrain 
himself from lining facts against fancy, illusory 



WHY ARMENIA 141 

hopes for distant mandataries against the reality 
next door, and confessing that somebody has been 
asleep in the conning tower of the ship of state. 

At the time of its occurrence the occupation of 
Vera Cruz appeared to be a necessity; looking back 
at it from a vantage point of only six years we 
know that the score of Americans and the hun- 
dreds of Mexicans who gave up their lives on that 
occasion died futilely, a sacrifice to the ignorance 
of a national leader who had his head buried not 
in sand but in the clouds. In this case high aims 
brought us no compensation whatever; no single 
benefit arising from evacuation of the port has 
come to light as a counterbalance to the long line 
of wreckage which marks the track of the supine 
policy which the event inaugurated. 

In opposition to Mr. Morgenthau's implied 
opinion of conditions in Mexico we continued to 
find in the press periodical statements of certain 
individuals interested in that country to the 
effect that Mexico under Carranza was not in a 
state of anarchy, that his government was 
engaged in a battle for genuine reform, that 



t42 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

public carrier agencies were operating satisfac- 
torily, that reports as to insecurity of life and 
property were exaggerated and that, generally 
speaking, conditions were as good as could be 
expected. In a previous chapter the workings of 
the "freeze-out" table were fully described. 

Just as it was possible to find a man calling 
himself an American venal enough to pay bail for 
Jenkins against Jenkins' will and thus cut the 
ground from under the State Department and 
afford a loop-hole through which our administra- 
tion could slip and once more betray one of its 
citizens (and in this case its official representative) 
to such a shamefully unjust hounding as few men 
have ever suffered, so it is possible to find others 
who are willing to step deliberately under the wing 
of any oligarchy in control of Mexico for personal 
profit even though that wing happens to be em- 
ployed in smothering the long-established inter- 
ests of their fellow countrymen. 

You say this may apply to business men but 
would not reach that distinct division of mission- 
aries who were the most persistent defenders of 



WHY ARMENIA 143 

the Carranza regime unless it can be shown that 
they are the recipients of subsidies. There are still 
more ways of killing a cat than by choking it with 
milk. Would it give you a new slant to learn 
that no foreign clergyman of any category what- 
ever has a legal right to exercise his profession in 
Mexico? I quote from Article 1 30 of the constitu- 
tion of May, 1917. "The law recognises no juri- 
dicial personality in the religious institutions 
known as churches. Ministers of religious creeds 
shall be considered as persons exercising a pro- 
fession. ..... Only a Mexican by birth may 

be a minister of any religious creed in Mexico,** 

Add to that the following from the same 
Article. "No minister of any religious creed may 
inherit, either on his own behalf or by means of a 
trustee or otherwise, any real property occupied 
by any association of religious propaganda or 
religious or charitable purposes. Ministers of 
religious creeds are incapable legally of inheriting 
by will from ministers of the same religious creed 
or from any private individual to whom they are 
not related by blood within the fourth degree." 



144 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

Now read paragraph II of Article 27. "The 
religious institutions known as churches, irrespec- 
tive of creed shall in no case have legal capacity 
to acquire, hold or administer real property or 
loans made on such real property; all such real 
property or loans as may be at present held by the 
said religious institutions, either on their own be- 
half or through third parties, shall vest in the 
Nation, and any one shall have the right to de- 
nounce property so held. Presumptive proof 
shall be sufficient to declare the denunciation well- 
founded. Places of public worship are the property 
of the Nation, as represented by the Federal 
Government, which shall determine which of them 
may continue to be devoted to their present 
purposes. Episcopal residences, rectories, semi- 
naries, orphan asylums or collegiate establish- 
ments of religious institutions, convents or any 
other buildings built or designed for the adminis- 
tration, propaganda, or teaching of the tenets of 
any religious creed shall forthwith vest, as of full 
right, directly in the Nation, to be used exclusively 
for the public services of the Federation or of the 



WHY ARMENIA 145 

States, withm their respective jurisdictions. All 
places of public worship which shall later be 
erected shall be the property of the Nation." 

What do you gather from these three quota- 
tions? First, that an American is prescribed by 
constitutional law from exercising any religious 
function whatever in Mexico; second, that he can 
neither hold nor inherit church property, third, 
that there is no such thing as church property. 
In the face of all this fundamental legislation there 
are still American missionaries in Mexico, in 
possession of all the church property they had 
when Carranza came into power. The only dif- 
ference is that through no fault of their own, they 
lived for years in the hollow of Carranza's hand 
and by his individual grace instead of in God*s 
keeping. Most of them were honest, bewildered 
and silent; the ones who talked, naturally had to 
talk for Carranza and talk loud. 

Those who took advantage of the fact that the 
American public cannot easily check up on opti- 
mistic assertions regarding Mexico and defended 
Carranza to the day of his downfall (and no longer) 



146 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

were given the lie by the Mexican press itself. 
During the six months ending with Januciry of 
this year Mexico City papers reported twenty- 
seven major train outrages distributed over the 
states of Chiapas, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Colima, 
Durango, Jalisco, Mexico, Michoacan, Nuevo Leon, 
Puebla, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Vera Cruz and 
Yucatan. These widely separated states are just 
half the number which make up the Mexican Fed- 
eration and represent over half its total territory. 

Rebel activities during the same period of time 
showed raids, outrages and engagements with 
Federal forces as follows: 4 in the State of Agua- 
scalientes; 13 In Chihuahua; 4 in Chiapas; 8 in 
Coahuila; 8 in Colima; 14 in Durango; 5 in the 
Federal District; 2 in Guerrero; 3 in Hidalgo; 17 
in Jalisco; 20 in Michoacan; 2 in Tabasco; 7 in 
Tamaulipas; 33 in Vera Cruz; 4 in Zacatecas; 2 in 
Nuevo Leon; 4 in Uaxaca; 23 in Puebla; 3 in San 
Luis Potosi and 7 in Sonora; — 183 disturbances in 
19 states and the Federal District out of a possible 
total of 29 self-governing divisions of the so-called 
Republic. 



WHY ARMENIA 147 

These lists are by no means complete; they 
are compiled from published accounts in the Mex- 
ican daily papers whose sources of information 
were not only limited but subject in frequent cases 
to suppression, as is evidenced by the summary 
expulsion from Mexico of two American news- 
paper correspondents for filing despatches cover- 
ing matters of fact. 

Defenders of the Carranza regime were fond of 
pointing out such passages as the following from 
the new constitution. "Article 31. It shall be the 
duty of every Mexican to compel the attendance 
at private or public schools of their children or 
wards, when under 15 years of age, in order that 
they may receive primary instruction and mili- 
tary training." Also Article 73, paragraph XXVII : 
"The Congress shall have power to establish pro- 
fessional schools of scientific research and fine 
arts, vocational, agricultural and trade schools, 
museums, libraries, observatories and other in- 
stitutes of higher learning." 

Bombast. Read the other side of the picture, 



148 IS MEXICO^ WORTH SAVING 

the Side presented daily to public view and so self- 
evident that not a single voice was raised in pro- 
test when on February second General Alvaro 
Obregon, who four months later was to be the self- 
appointed Nemesis of Carranza, stated in a speech 
before a large audience in Mexico City, "The 
penal colony is not large enough to hold the 
poor men for stealing bread while bandits drive 
through the streets in luxurious automobiles, 
fruits of their systematic robberies, the wit- 
nesses having been assassinated in the cells 
of the penitentiary. There will be no justice in 
Mexico while the school teachers have to live on 
charity while mistresses pass them flaunting 
jewels/' 

Does this mean that General Obregon will 
prove a savior for his country? Hardly. The 
General's assertions brought forth no denial of the 
facts but got the following reply from Don Jenciro 
Moreno in an interview given to one of the prin- 
cipal papers of Mexico City. "Practically since 
1916 the administration of justice has been in the 
hands of the partisans of Obregon The 



WHY ARMENIA 149 

consuming sore upon which Obregon has placed 
his finger originated in his own camp and each 
day goes from bad to worse." 

As early as February of this year the non- 
partisan Excelsior of Mexico City published a 
unique editorial of prophecy entitled, "Into 
the Dark." It said, in part, "To judge by appear- 
ances there is not the remotest hope that the 
coming elections will result in a triumph of democ- 
racy. Out of the silence which guards the future 
there does not come even assurance that the 
public peace will be safe. And this is because the 
purposes of the original revolution have not only 
failed but the revolution has been smashed into a 

thousand bits Revolutions which do 

not substitute a better condition for the one they 

overthrow, result in division and disaster 

What do we face at this moment? A campaign of 
hatred unlimited, an implacable war of extermina- 
tion It is no longer possible for one to 

deceive himself. From the sparks of this fire will 
be lighted the flames of the future civil war. . . . 
. . . Zero, and how much do you carry forward! 



150 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

"It was as a mccins of diminishing these irrita- 
tions which are precursors of another upheaval 
that the plan was adopted to launch the candidacy 
of Bonillas. But the candidacy of Bonillas 
strikes us as a joke. It seems to us not so much 
like Nero playing while Rome burns as like 
Harlequin singing to the moon on a stormy night. 
Nice Mr. Bonillas! Estimable Mr. Bonillas! 
Why do you sally from your house in the midst of 
this cloudburst without an umbrella?^ 

"No. Here we have no solution 

Thus we proceed. Thus we go blindly into the 
darkness without purpose, without destination, 
without a known road through an unknown coun- 
try with an abyss on either side, in the midst of a 
tempest in which the very name of the Fatherland 
seems to have effaced itself from the conscience 
of the Mexicans." 

It IS a curious thing that Americans in general 
are better informed on the racial intricacies attend- 
ing reforms in Turkey than they are on the con- 
flicting elements across our own border. There is, 
of course, a natural explanation of this fact. Under 



WHY ARMENIA 151 

date of February 12, 1920, Mr. Gerard in his 
capacity as Chairman of the American Committee 
for the Independence of Armenia sent to Arthur 
J. Balfour of the British government a cable in 
which the following statements appear: "Amer- 
icans have already given $30,000,000, and are now 
being asked another $30,000,000 for Armenian 
relief. There exists here preponderant opinion 
favoring America's aiding Armenia during her 
formative period." 

Americans are not in the habit of giving away 
$30,000,000 to a specific cause and planning to 
double the amount without first getting a pretty 
definite idea as to the need and the uses to which 
the money is to be put. This feature alone of 
charity on a large scale puts an obligation of 
investigation not only on the many contributors 
but more especially on those prominent persons 
who accept leadership in the movement and in the 
application of funds. In other words, if at any 
time there had been a nation-wide campaign for 
contributions in money for the relief of misery in 
Mexico we would have gained a general concep- 



152 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

tion of conditions in that country at least equal 
to our public knowledge of Armenia and its needs. 
Philanthropists and all lesser charitable per- 
sons have a right to ask, "If there is or has been 
misery in Mexico comparable to that in Armenia, 
why have we not been asked to help?" The 
answer to that question is, "Carranza." Holding 
power largely through a policy of enmity toward 
the United States he could not consistently allow 
his countrymen, whatever their necessity, to feed 
from the hand he so often befouled. The records 
of the American Red Cross bear eloquent testi- 
mony not only as to sufferings in Mexico at various 
times but also as to the reception given by Car- 
ranza from the inception of his power up to the 
day of his death to offers and efforts at relief 
by Americans. 

In the Red Cross Magazine for November, 
1915, it is stated that, "Twenty-six thousand 
applications for aid have been investigated and 
approved by responsible organizations and indi- 
viduals As many as 3,400 persons 

have made applications at headquarters in a single 



WHY ARMENIA 153 

day, besides hundreds who applied in other places. 

The total quantity of soup delivered 

from August 5 to September 4, inclusive, was 

553,575 liters Through a special 

arrangement a number of cases of extreme starva- 
tion requiring medical attention have been treated 
in the American Hospital." 

In the face of these conditions the Red Cross 
was ordered out of Mexico on October eighth at the 
request of General Carranza and as a preliminary 
to our recognition of his de facto government on 
the following day. The Red Cross made the fol- 
lowing guarded announcement: "At the request 
of General Carranza and with the advice of the 
American Department of State, which was con- 
sonant with the request, the American Red Cross 
discontinued its relief activities in both southern 
and northern Mexico October 8, and Special 
Agents Charles J. O'Connor and J. C. Weller, 
whose enterprise, hardihood and efficiency in 
relieving the starving populace have brought 
them much praise, have been withdrawn." 
Covering the period of thirty days ending Sep- 



154 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

tember 25, 1915, Mr. J. C. Weller, special agent of 
the American Red Cross, submitted a report to 
that organization which if it could be quoted in full 
would prove an eye-opener to those who doubt that 
the enmity of the Constitutionalist government 
to the United States was not a passing whim but an 
active policy of long standing. Sandwiched in 
between accounts of attacks by Carranzistas on 
the Red Cross and looting by them of its supplies, 
we find this statement, "Before leaving us the 
Carranzistas were very anxious to know about the 
success of their compatriots with the Texas revo- 
lution. They were very much surprised when I 
told them that the Texas trouble was practically 
over. They seem to be under the impression that 
the Carranza lines were extended to within a 
few miles of San Antonio. They left me, shouting, 
'Adios, Gringo; we will see you in San Antonio.* 
This was not a small party of men, but the general 
impression was there were some 1 ,200 men in this 

command It is evident that the 

chiefs have been promising these men a paseo in 



WHY ARMENIA 155 

San Antonio when they take it This I heard 
from several men who ranked as high as captain." 
Speaking of the make-up of the Constitu- 
tionalist party which is in power to this day, 
whether led by Carranza or Obregon, and has run 
true to form, Mr. Weller says, "In conclusion I 
only regret that some of our higher-up Govern- 
ment officials could not have been with me to 
see the brand of individuals that are now in con- 
trol of the situation in Mexico. They do not repre- 
sent any of the good element in Mexico 

General Ellisondo, in command of a district 
larger than Massachusetts, is a boy 24 years old, 
uneducated and absolutely irresponsible. General 
Zuazua was formerly classed as a saloon bum 
around Eagle Pass. A lieutenant colonel in com- 
mand of a territory as big as Rhode Island was 
sent to the Mexican Army for stealing horses and 
cattle. These are not the exceptions but the rule. 

I do not find any difference between 

the Carranza faction and the Villa faction, with 
the exception that Pancho Villa seems to have a 
better control over his men Having 



156 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

been in personal contact with both factions, I 
believe that it would be a crime to turn loose this 
some 200,000 bandits, thieves and scapegoats on 
the country." 

Mr. Weller's description of the class of men 
commanding Carranza's troops in northern Mex- 
ico applies equally to Obregon's leaders at the 
present day. That statement is not put forward 
as an aspersion but merely as a point of fact which 
we and Obregon will have to face sooner or later. 
That Carranza's attitude toward American relief 
never changed was evidenced by the account 
printed in Excelsior of February third of this year 
of the rebuff administered to the American Red 
Cross as well as to the American Chamber of 
Commerce of Mexico when they attempted to 
render aid to the thousands of sufferers from the 
recent earthquake in the State of Vera Cruz. The 
stand taken by the authorities forced the Chamber 
to return all subscriptions to its one million peso 
fund to the donors. The Red Cross expended over 
ten thousand dollars through the American Con- 
sul and contemplated sending a relief unit until it was 



WHY ARMENIA 157 

unofficially advised that such an act would not be 
received with any degree of cordiality by the 
Mexican authorities. 

We come now to the cardinal question, what 
is the nature of the distress in Mexico which 
justifies the title to this chapter? The answer 
cannot be given in a single paragraph because it 
strikes below the level of surface charity and is 
founded on considerations which link the subject 
of specific relief to relief of the nation as a whole. 
In other words, it leads us straight to the field of 
controversy where those of us who are for taking 
sensible, immediate and final action as regards 
internal conditions in Mexico are lined up against 
the advocates of chaos as its own cure. 

First of all, one cannot emphasize too strongly 
the fact that the population of Mexico is not a 
homogeneous mass. It is made up of three dis- 
tinct elements which can be roughly divided in the 
present day as follows: the bourgeoisie who lived 
a life of ease under Diaz; the parvenus who have 
displaced them under Carranza and the vast, 
unchanging horde of aborigines of over thirty dis- 



158 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

tinct tribes embraced under the single term (rf 
peon. The first and second of these divisions 
number about ten per cent, each of the total; 
the peons make up the eighty per cent, to balance. 
It is with this submerged eight-tenths of the 
Mexican peoples that we are especially concerned 
here, not necessarily from any motives of altruism 
but because their well-being and prosperity are 
becoming more and more linked to ours and, in 
the same proportion, the causes of their oppression 
and misery are merging with the causes which 
make Mexico an impossible neighbor. To put it 
in plain English, what we do for the peon,!^we do 
for ourselves, and his salvation from subjugation 
under a century of so-called self-determination 
would carry with it a clean-up of the reign of 
banditry and graft which is at the bottom of our 
present fermenting troubles with Mexico. 

The case of the inarticulate common people of 
Mexico is a sad one. From the time the republican 
government was constituted in 1 824 to the advent 
of Diaz in 1876 they suffered under thirty-four 
presidents, (twenty-five of whom were generals) 



WHY ARMENIA 159 

and an emperor. In forty-eight years they were 
whipped about by thirty-five administrations 
practically all of which came into power by 
violence. Bring that statement home by asking 
yourself what would happen to your own or your 
children's development if we were to select a 
president a little of tener than bi-annually by force 
of arms. 

Eliminating the purely nominal interim of 
Gonzalez, the strong arm of Diaz held the country 
in subjection for twenty-five years. As I have 
shown previously, Diaz brought about the indus- 
trial birth of Mexico, but he was powerless to make 
his basic social reforms keep step with the meteoric 
rise of industrial prosperity. At the end of his 
reign, except for the bare benefit of a quarter of a 
century of unaccustomed peace, the lot of the 
peon was no better than before his advent. Fol- 
lowing Diaz, eight presidents held the reins of 
government in the short space of the four years 
which preceded the ascendancy of Carranza. 

With governments changing at such a rate 
Americans are justified in assuming that the peons 



160 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

who represent twelve million out of a possible 
total population of sixteen million must be gener- 
ally turbulent. Nothing could be further from 
the actual truth than such an assumption and it 
is almost as damaging to the cause of American 
aid to Mexico as the misguided preachings of 
those who honestly but ignorantly believe that 
Mexico is a self-governing republic and not a series 
of oligarchies each of which has sucked the blood 
of the prostrate peon until to-day he is actually at 
a lower level of autonomy than he was under the 
Aztecs. 

I unhesitatingly make the assertion that the 
common people of Mexico, all that vast sub- 
merged division which has become colloquially 
branded under the name of * pelado," (which 
literally translated means "plucked") is naturally 
of a peaceful disposition, laborious though sloth- 
ful, inclined through very indolence to honesty, 
incapable of concerted action and astoundingly 
inarticulate. 

Such being the case, it is natural to ask, how 
account for the innumerable bands of rebels and 



WHY ARMENIA 161 

outlaws which infest the country from border to 
border and sea to sea? I will tell you and the 
answer is worth remembering when you next 
come across any grandiloquent manifesto of 
would-be or actual Mexican authorities. The 
Mexican recruit never knows and never has known 
what he fights for. He never by any chance says 
"The general," "the colonel" or "the captain," 
but always, "My general," "my colonel," "my 
captain." His service is always immediate and 
personal, never objective. 

This leaves us still at sea as to why he serves. 
In the first place, conscription is an established 
principle in Mexico; in the second, the peon 
through the length and breadth of the country 
lives on Indian corn and beans. He eats other 
things but as a last resource he depends absolutely 
on corn or beans to ward off actual starvation. As 
a result his sole lasting and unchanging inclina- 
tion is to plant and gather these two harvests. 
This fact makes him exceptionally vulnerable. 
All a bandit or a federal leader in need of recruits 
has to do is to descend on some fertile valley and 



162^ IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

destroy or steal the year's crops. The peon is left 
with Hobson's choice, -Ik, must either join the 
robbers and himself live by plunder or die. 

There are, of course, exceptions to this general 
rule and in certain localities the habit of plunder 
has been taken on by the humble agrarian as an 
avocation. Having learned the trick, he is apt 
to pull off a train hold-up and then bury his arms 
and quietly return to his fields to the confounding 
of occasional pursuit. On the other hand, in at 
least one large district the plague of government 
and other bandits has come up against a wall of 
armed resistance where organized planters of 
every degree have made good their intention to 
protect their crops. 

But the sum total of the situation is that the 
country is kept in constant turmoil by the vicious 
circle of depredations having its origin in corrupt 
authority and apparently coming back like a 
boomerang to embarrass that authority. De- 
fenders of the Carranza oligarchy pointed to this 
embarrassment as a legitimate obstacle which the 
government was striving to overcome. They re- 



WHY ARMENIA 163 

fused to recognize what every Mexican knew to be 
true in his heart, — namely, that the G)nstitu- 
tionalist regime under Carranza drew what breath 
of life it had from the continuation of banditry in 
one form or another. 

Under its baleful reign an element heretofore 
exempt from absolute penury was dragged down 
into the necessitous condition of the peon with- 
out having the habitual power of endurance 
inculcated by centuries of oppression into the 
"pelado" to fall back upon. I refer to what we 
would term the government brain-workers and 
skilled mechanics of the middle class, the low- 
salaried clerks, school teachers, modest employees 
and industrials who looked to government for pay 
but were not in positions where their honor had a 
cash value. 

The distress of this element during the last four 
years, while sixty per cent, of the total revenue of 
the country (greater than ever before in its history) 
was being handed to the military as one hands a 
stick of candy to a naughty child to keep him 
quiet, beggars description. One thousand skilled 



164 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

mechanics, discharged from the national railways 
at a time when but for Carranza's insistence on 
keeping the trouble-pot with the United States at 
a boiling point the railway shops would have been 
running to full capacity, applied in a single 
memorandum to the American Consulate General 
for facilities to cross the border. 

The plight of the government employees in a 
stricter sense of the word was worse. School teach- 
ers starved or committed suicide; hungry-eyed 
clerks, debarred by chance from all those various 
posts of responsibility where one can fall back on 
graft, blackmail or embezzlement, were cut down 
in pay until they walked to and from their pre- 
carious employment looking like specters held 
to life by a thin-drawn thread of hope in the face 
of desperation. 

While cabinet officials were handing one another 
high-priced motor-cars as souvenirs and generals 
of division were buying up palatial dwellings 
at a rate which created a small boom in real 
estate, the daily press of Mexico of only eighteen 
months ago apathethically described the eating 



WHY ARMENIA 165 

alive by rats of women weakened by age and 
children emaciated by hunger. It was a gruesome 
news-item but nothing more. 

But Mexicans have no comer on apathy. On 
Sunday, March twentieth of this year, The New 
Yorli, Telegram published two items cheek by jowl 
in parallel columns. The first was headed "Mex- 
ico to Prevent Flight of Jenkins," the other, 
"Mexico Plans to Make Own Guns, Palmer Says." 
The first item stated that the authorities at Puebla, 
having discovered that W. 0. Jenkins, American 
Consular Agent there, was planning to leave 
secretly for the United States had taken meas- 
ures to prevent this action. My comment on 
that IS that as our State Department held abso- 
lute proof of the innocence of Jenkins and as in 
the face of that proof the President insisted on 
abandoning him, no blame can attach to the 
Mexicans for adding insult to injury and piling 
ordure on affront. 

The gist of the second item is to the effect that 
the Attorney General was of the opinion that while 
exportation from the United States to Mexico of 



166 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

arms and ammunition is now prohibited, exporta- 
tion of machinery for the building of an armament 
factory would not come under a fair construction of 
these laws and therefore could not be prohibited. 
He then shifted responsibility by pointing out that 
under war powers President Wilson could bar 
exportation of any article. In other words, we 
have a national right to prevent our left leg from 
being bitten by a mad dog, but only the Executive 
has the authority to protect our right leg from the 
same bite. 

The result of the conditions existing not five 
years ago but to-day in Mexico, and which I have 
tried to outline so fairly that none but the hypo- 
critical can take exception to my deductions, is a 
wide-spread and continuing misery throughout the 
lower classes and the more inaccessible regions of 
Mexico that in frequently recurring periods of 
famine equals anything we have heard of in 
Armenia both as to the millions affected and the 
scope of disaster. What would be your choice 
between a swift death by massacre or the slow 
torture of famine? 



WHY ARMENIA 167 

The peon is naturally improvident; in the face 
of varying climatic conditions he can do no more 
than hold his own. What would be penury to our 
agricultural laboring class is to him affluence. 
Strike at his narrow margin of a bare livelihood 
by turbulent conditions added to the menace of 
droughts and he is immediately plunged into 
starvation. 

If the reader has been patient enough to follow 
me thus far he will be able to understand why no 
nation-wide appeal for money has ever been made 
to Americans for relief in Mexico; he will also see 
that no such fund could be applied to its legitimate 
object. If he will follow me further I shall attempt 
to show that the complications of the Mexican 
situation demand from us a more difficult kind of 
giving, a charity of thought, of understanding and 
finally of action which makes a demand on our 
patience and time, two commodities which we are 
apt to value beyond cash. 

In all such matters we have a national inclina- 
tion to demand solution of the problem and let 
the exposition take care of itself, but I refuse to be 



168 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

drawn into the trap which has caught the feet of 
the many know-it-alls who have wandered through 
Mexico befogged by preconceived notions of 
unattainable ideals and come out to do immeasur- 
able damage by advocating impracticable ends 
wholly divorced from the actualities which cry 
aloud for a short peck of common sense. 

If this book is an arraignment of the govern- 
ment we put in power in Mexico and of our 
disastrous share in the chaos existing in that coun- 
try, for my own protection if for no higher reason it 
should be made fool-proof and hog-tight before 
being submitted as a basis for such radical action 
as has never yet been applied in our foreign rela- 
tions. In this connection there is a large division 
of Americans which to-day is giving its entire 
attention to minding its own business and which 
can be expected to ask, "If we left them alone 
for a hundred years, why not leave them alone for 
another hundred?" 

The answer to that is easy. Once we had no 
stake in Mexico, to-day we have. Once Mexico 



WHY ARMENIA] 169 

was not a factor in the world's commerce, to-day 
it IS. Once Mexico was a yapping cur, to-day it is 
a knife held steadily at the back of our national 
peace. Once Mexico invited investment and 
offered security to life and property, to-day a 
thousand major claims are gathering dust in the 
archives of a somnolent and sterilized Department 
of State. 

You cannot go back on a billion dollars of 
your neighbor's money without hearing the wail 
of the holders of the bag, Tom, Dick and Harry, 
morning, noon and night. You cannot ignore 
robbery and foul play next door and look for a 
square deal from the rest of the jeering world. 
You cannot overlook Mexico and put your hand 
in your pocket for Armenia without proclaiming 
yourself a fool. You cannot submit to the murder 
by a recognized friendly government of your own 
flesh and blood at the rate of two a month for 
thirty-six months without declaring a perpetual 
open season for the potting of every American 
who ventures abroad. When it comes right down 



170 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

to hard tacks, you cannot bring up your boy to 
put up with all or any of these things without 
despising him and yourself m the long run of 
national character-building. 



CHAPTER VI 

NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 

On March 23, 1920, a new American Ambas- 
sador to Mexico was appointed and the choice of 
the administration was rightly commended by 
the vast majority of the press, A New York 
editorial on the following day opened with these 
words: "It is permissible for the friends of peace 
and good neighborhood to hope that the appoint- 
ment of Mr. Henry Morgenthau as Ambassador 
to Mexico portends the reestablishment of rela- 
tions of confidence and friendship with the 
Government and the people of that Republic." 

No exception whatever could be taken to the 
President's selection; on the other hand it is by 
no means permissible for the friends of peace and 
good neighborhood to draw the pleasant auguries 
pictured by this editorial. The mere appointment 
of an ambassador to Mexico at the present junc- 
ture IS fraught with danger to the best interests of 
the United States and was at once an unwarranted 

171 



172 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

concession to a government which had flouted all 
our efforts toward friendly dealing and an imposi- 
tion on Mr. Morgenthau himself whose exceptional 
record and training should have saved him from 
the threat of being stretched on the rack of the 
Mexican post. Fortunately for him his appoint- 
ment found the Senate in no mood to confirm any 
envoy to Mexico. But that the attempt to send 
one should have been made is a matter for alarm. 
The editorial quoted goes on to say that he "will 
be in a position to tell the Mexicans that there is 
no reason on earth why the relations between their 
country and the United States should not be those 
of friendship, of frankness and fair dealing. Their 
industries, their commerce, their credit, will be 
immensely advantaged by good understanding, 
and thus he will be able to point out to them that 
friendly spirit which one neighbor should always 
feel toward another." 

This echo from the book of Rollo is a master- 
piece of its kind. It might have been written by 
any journalist in a sound sleep. Take the state- 
ment that there is no reason on earth why the 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 1 73 

relations between Mexico and this country should 
not be those of friendship, of frankness and fair 
dealing. What are the facts? Five hundred and 
fifty-nine Americans murdered since the fall of 
Diaz without reparation of any kind; American 
property values destroyed in over one-third of the 
states of the so-called Republic without indemnity; 
between eight hundred and one thousand claims 
mouldering in the files of our State Department 
without hope of settlement; confiscatory inter- 
pretation of the clauses of the new constitution 
jeopardizing American vested interests to the tune 
of hundreds of millions, arbitrary juggling of 
national budgets to evade legitimate international 
obligations and, most significant of all, a consis- 
tent evasion of friendly or any other kind of nego- 
tiation on all these points. In short, up to the 
actual collapse of Carranza, we were in possession 
of the entire credit side of the ledger and faced by 
a debtor who, far from showing Inclination to pay, 
displayed a cynical aptitude for piling insult on 
injury. 

These are the rocks which must be removed 



174 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

before the double stream of our relations with 
Mexico can attain an even and peaceful flow. 
But these specific obstacles are only half the story. 
If they stood isolated from the fabric of the 
machine which Carranza built up and which 
threatens to prolong its activities beyond his 
individual elimination, they could be attacked 
one by one by an experienced diplomat with some 
hope of their ultimate removal. Unfortunately they 
are attached in an unholy union to the very vitals 
of an organization which has sucked nutriment 
from opposition to "friendship, frankness and 
fair dealing" with the United States and, such 
being the case, the appointment of an ambassador 
was a move which should have been studied 
seriously before it was given even qualified 
approval. 

There is nothing more maddening and at the 
same time more unjust to those who represented 
the United States in Mexico during the period 
of our participation in the World War than the 
implication that they were remiss in pressing 
upon that country by every means in their power 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 1 75 

the advantages of a genuinely friendly relation- 
ship. That they failed of their objective is due 
entirely to the fact that while they had the 
sympathy and support of the State Department, 
the State Department was to all intents and 
purposes cut off from the White House and con- 
sequently powerless. 

Owing to recent developments which are in 
the knowledge of the public, it is permissible to 
call attention to an important feature of our 
recent official relations with Mexico, and that is, 
that we had not a presidential dictatorship using 
the State Department as a tool but an absolute 
hiatus between the machinery of our foreign rela- 
tions and the Executive. The plant was in fairly 
good running order but the connecting rod linking 
it to the source of power was more than twisted; 
it was discarded. 

During the entire three years of Mr. Fletcher's 
embassy to Mexico he was granted but a single 
interview with the President on Mexican affairs 
and that conversation was devoted to securing 
release of ammunition to Mexico in the spring of 



176 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

1917. For the rest of the time, the Ambassador 
occupied the anomalous position of being on paper 
the personal representative of the President, but 
in fact nothing more than the voluminous infor- 
mant of a State Department, which in turn could 
do no more than supply a tomb for a mass of 
occurrences and deductions which should have 
formed the basis for an active and comprehensive 
policy. Throughout this period the only intima- 
tion, the only suggestion of a move toward a 
definite line of action in regard to Mexico, was a 
circular instruction to diplomatic and consular 
oflScers to "shower benefits on Mexico." This 
initiative was ascribed in plain terms to the Pres- 
ident but carried no intimation that it was founded 
on any but abstract considerations. 

Whatever their personal views may have been 
as to the wisdom of such a move, this faint stirring 
of interest in Mexican relations was seized upon 
by the representatives of the United States with 
avidity and given whole-hearted execution. In 
the face of one rebuff after another in both the 
diplomatic and strictly commercial fields of our 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 1 77 

international contact, our officers presented a 
steadily smiling front until a point was reached 
where they could no longer countenance thievery 
of the Mexicans by Mexicans on the one hand 
and murder of Americans on the other without 
surrendering forever their individual self-respect. 
Thievery and murder are strong words, but 
none too strong to describe an issue which forces 
senior officers across the broad limit which divides 
the official as such from the individual man. I 
mean by that, that a representative of any govern- 
ment is technically a hand of that government 
extended abroad and taking its direction from the 
central will. Technically he is that and nothing 
more, but once in a while a condition arises where 
the mechanical hand becomes human, where the 
personal equation gradually asserts itself over the 
machinery of cut and dried instructions and the 
individual awakes to the fact that he himself can 
go no further along the line marked out by his 
government without becoming vile in his own 
eyes. To his country such a development is 
seldom a matter of importance, but to the self- 



178 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

respecting Individual it is an intimate climax; 
he is face to face with the necessity of surrendering 
either his manhood or his official status. 

Such a condition came to a head in Mexico at 
about the time of the armistice. It arose from a 
long accumulation of incidents but one alone will 
be sufficient to enable you to apply a test and ask 
yourself, "What would I have done if it had been 
up to me?" 

Do you remember when you were going without 
sugar for your second cup of coffee and had mighty 
little for your first? Do you remember when your 
wife was trying desperately to substitute inge- 
nuity for white flour and getting away with it at 
the expense of your digestion? During all that 
time there never was a day when the adherents 
of the Carranza machine lacked their fill of sugar 
and white flour. Simultaneously tremendous 
pressure was brought to becu* on the American 
Consulate General to facilitate the entry of 
American corn to save the common people of 
Mexico from actual starvation. 

On the face of things there was a paradox and 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 179 

a paradox actually existed. A telegraphic investi- 
gation made under instruction from our Depart- 
ment of State revealed the fact that eighty per 
cent, of Mexico and the Mexicans was threatened 
with imminent famine. Great planters whose 
sympathies were by no means with us in the 
crucial question of the war, lowered their pride, 
changed their avowals of adherence and presented 
themselves with tears running down their cheeks 
to beg for the chance to buy corn to feed their 
starving peon retainers. As a result concessions 
in the way of export of corn were made to Mexico 
such as we granted to no other neutral country, 
however friendly or however urgent its needs. 

At the same time, the millers of Mexico sub- 
mitted a volume of circumstantial evidence to the 
effect that if we did not release a certain amount 
of wheat, white bread would disappear from the 
Mexican table. They exhibited statistics on 
existing stocks, on the rate of consumption and on 
the sufferings which would result to the entire 
middle class from our refusal to come to their aid. 
This appeal failed. Why? Because individually 



180 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

I never laid in a stock of over ten pounds of flour 
and the frequent purchases of my cook In the 
open market supplied a small-sized but practical 
barometer which refuted the exaggerated state- 
ments of the millers. Nevertheless, there was a 
wide-spread popular belief that the country was 
on the verge of a bread famine which would 
supplement the lack of corn and thus plunge all 
classes of the Mexican family into the same 
hungry boat. 

However, soon after the Consulate General had 
refused to lend its aid to this project, the unfore- 
seen accumulation of flour stocks in the United 
States permitted the release of fifty million 
pounds to Mexico and a conference of all our 
consular officers in that country was called to 
arrange an equitable distribution of the shipments. 
Within forty-eight hours it was rumored that 
the millers had started a movement to persuade 
the acting Secretary of the Mexican Treasury to 
place an import duty on wheat flour. Apparently 
the famine arguments they had put forward when 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 181 

pressing their demands for whole wheat did not 
apply to the ground grain. 

The proposition for an import duty on flour 
seemed too preposterous for credence. The papers 
had hailed the large release of flour by the United 
States with hearty commendation and merchants 
were swarming at the Consulate General to secure 
their quotas at the earliest possible moment. 
Everybody knew the venal character of the 
Mexican Treasury Department, but importers felt 
that in this case at least public opinion would form 
an eflFective barrier to any tariff juggling which 
might start an echo in the empty national stomach. 
The feasibility of tariff juggling (under an extra- 
ordinary bit of legislation the dangers of which 
have been ignored here and scarcely appreciated 
in Mexico) remained as the only justification for 
the persistent rumors that continued to reach 
the Consulate General to the effect that an im- 
port duty would surely be put on flour before 
the shipments from the United States could arrive 
and that the method of persuasion by the millers 
would be the ancient medium of hard cash. 



182 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

Within a week our secret service, at that time 
still active in Mexico, secured a copy of a telegram 
sent by the millers in Mexico City to the millers 
in Guadalajara which, being translated, ran as 
follows: "N. asks 150,000 pesos to put duty on 
flour. Will you stand your share?" It is natur- 
ally impossible to cite the persons who reported 
by word of mouth and day by day the actual 
negotiations which ended (as predicted by the 
informants from the rise of the first rumor) in an 
import duty conceded for a cash price. 

This incident stands out as easily the most 
cynical example of the Carranza graft machine in 
full action. On its shameless face it was at once a 
crime against the Mexican people and an affront 
to the United States. It was because it was an 
affront to the United States and a barrier to the 
wave of good feeling arising from our action in 
releasing the flour that Carranza could afford to 
stand for it. 

American merchants, accustomed to doing 
business on a fixed tariff and who know from their 
experiences during periods of tariff revision the 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 183 

basic relation between import trade and estab- 
lished import duties, are apt to doubt the imposi- 
tion of an import duty on a prime necessity of life 
in any country by executive decree. Let me call 
the attention of such doubters to the parenthesis 
inserted three paragraphs above which made a 
passing allusion to a choice bit of Carranza 
legislation and stated that its dangers have been 
Ignored in the United States and scarcely appre- 
ciated in Mexico. 

That allusion referred to the powers granted 
to the Mexican Executive by a subservient legis- 
lature and which he held for a term of years (and 
still holds) to change the import tariffs of the 
country on such articles and for such periods and 
purposes as he saw fit by executive decree un- 
supported by any legislative debate or specific 
authorization: Of all the implements of com- 
mercial torture, this is the most perfected quick- 
graft producer known to the history of interna- 
tional trade. 

What does it mean? It means that no man can 
carry on a successful business in Mexico while this 



184 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

provision continues without dirtying his hands 
with bribery. Unless you are a merchant you can- 
not weigh that statement without an illustration. 
Imagine that you are an importer and that the 
President has the power to change the tariff on 
twenty-four hours' notice or even make the change 
retroactive. Imagine further that five out of any 
tencabinet officers have personal go-betweens who 
are known to all and sundry as fixed avenues of 
approach. Suppose that you have a large ship- 
ment of raw material on the way to meet con- 
tractural obligations. You immediately become 
the prey of any one who hears of that shipment, 
and at the first rumor of a duty to be suddenly 
imposed on the raw material in question, you are 
faced with this alternative:^ "Sweat blood or pay." 
That is one angle of the picture; here is another. 
Your stocks are low, prices are high, salesmen are 
pressing you to buy and import. You can see a 
big profit, your mouth waters, but that is as far 
as you get. Why? It takes from two to ten 
months to secure delivery of goods from abroad 
and unless you stand in you cannot possibly know 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 185 

what will be the duty on any given article a week 
ahead. For general trade purposes it takes not 
only money but a genius for intrigue and under- 
ground alliances to "stand in,'* and few there be 
that measure up (or down) to the requirements. 
The average merchant is reduced to ordering one- 
tenth of what he would like to buy and distribut- 
ing his purchases so as to insure himself of a 
chance to balance loss here against profit there. 
Thieves only win; consumers lose. 

After seventeen years' experience in the com- 
mercial service of the United States I make the 
assertion that were all other grounds for friction 
with Mexico miraculously wiped oflF the slate 
this single item of the arbitrary power of the 
executive branch of the Mexican government to 
juggle import tariffs at will is so iniquitous in its 
endless ramifications that while it stands we are 
foolish to waste money on an ambassador to that 
country. If you will think you will see that this 
language is not extravagant. For generations 
tariff stipulations have been woven into the warp 
and woof of international comity. The Mexican 



186 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

tariff situation is a quicksand. Quite aside from 
its aspect of wide-spread blackmail it is capable 
of swallowing whole any doll's house lodging for a 
non-existent "friendship, frankness and fair 
dealing" which we may attempt to build on its 
unstable borders. 

However, the significance of the attempts to 
send an ambassador to Mexico does not hang on 
the issue of the tariff. While the danger of the 
situation on that issue to legitimate commerce 
was fully reported to the State Department, it is 
doubtful whether any official higher than a 
filing clerk has taken this menace to stabilized 
relations into consideration or even heard of it. 
The true measure of the action frustrated first by 
the United States Senate and then by the turn of 
events in Mexico can be taken only by painting 
in broad strokes the map of events which swept 
a Secretary of State, an Ambassador and lesser 
officials who were saturated with knowledge of 
conditions in Mexico off the board and substituted 
for them gentlemen who are popularly credited 
with a willingness to follow a blind lead. 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 187 

^A fair deduction from these events appeared in 
The New York World of March 24, 1920, which 
read in part as follows : "The President's appoint- 
ment of a successor to Ambassador Fletcher is 
his answer to the activities of the Senate Sub- 
Committee investigating Mexican affairs which 
has been presided over by Senator Fall of New 
Mexico. It is, moreover, his reply to the cam- 
paign which had obtained sympathetic considera- 
tion inside the Department of State to withdraw 
recognition from the Carranza Government by 
resolution of Congress. 

"It is true that Secretary Lansing, although 
the original proponent of recognition of Carranza, 
had got more or less out of patience with the 
actions of the Mexican Government in various 
disputes pending with the United States, and 
that Ambassador Fletcher, too, felt that all that 
could be done with dignity and honor had been 
attempted by the American Embassy at Mexico 
City to no avail.'* 

This is a mild statement of the true facts in the 
case. In the first place, while there had undoubt- 



188 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

edly been a strong campaign on the part of various 
organizations for the protection of American 
rights in Mexico to move the State Department 
to any policy, goocf or bad, so long as it was a 
fixed quantity and not the eternally unknown X, 
this legitimate activity met with minimum results. 
Why? Because the State Department was in 
mortal terror of the mere appearance of consorting 
with "big interests" at a time when dollar dip- 
lomacy was out of fashion. What really influenced 
the senior branch of our administrative machinery 
to cut its own throat by the mere act of coming 
to life for a brief moment. was^the sudden regJiza- 
tion that itjpreferred a quick exit to a^creeping 
death. 

It was being eaten alive not by clamorous 
claims from without but by the remorseless piling 
up of fact on fact from within. It knew what no 
one else knew about Mexico, not excepting the 
most rabid propagandists. It could not pass that 
knowledge on to the public, but what was far more 
fatal it could not even pass it up to the normal 
source of its own power. Robbed of that con- 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 189 

stitutional vent it was being rapidly choked to 
death by its automatic accumulation of stark 
truths which would not be denied, "big interests" 
or no "big interests." Aware at last that its 
machinery was slowing down under the burden 
to complete stoppage it emitted one single valiant 
shout against the rape of its faithful servant, 
Jenkins, and passed away. 

It is not the purpose of this book to mystify 
the reader on any particular nor to arouse the 
instincts of prejudiced partisanship. We are 
interested here merely in making clear the obscure. 
Consequently you have a right to know just what 
it was that clogged the wheels of the State Depart- 
ment. It had been almost feverish in its efforts 
through its representatives to carry out the order 
to "shower benefits on Mexico." These efforts 
were shattered without an exception against a 
blank wall and that blank wall was the unqualified 
refusal of Mexico to have benefits showered on her 
at any price. Imagine a chess-board where one 
side makes a succession of opening moves through 
three patient years and Its opponent merely blinks 



190 , IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

and never advances a single pawn. There you 
have a picture of our diplomatic relations with 
Mexico throughout the Carranza ascendancy. 

From the point of view of economic welfare 
the stand taken by Carranza brought untold and 
unnecessary suflFering on his nation as a whole, 
but from the view-point of abstract diplomacy his 
position was absolutely unassailable. We had a 
baker's dozen of paramount claims against 
Mexico; she had none against us. We had an- 
nounced that no matter what she did we would 
never resort to force. As a consequence she left 
all her diplomatic chessmen standing quite still 
and behind that screen began to pile one affront 
on another protected by nothing whatever beyond 
President Wilson's assurance that we had tied our 
own hands and given our executive word that we 
would keep them tied. 

Can you see the position of the State Depart- 
ment? As incident was added to incident, increas- 
ing the heap of unsettled claims almost day by 
day with never a settlement of a single outstand- 
ing question, it realized that to all intents it had 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 191 

actually ceased to function. It was not moved 
to take thought by arguments of its representatives 
but by cold facts, — ten cabled words telling of a 
fresh murder, fifty describing a confiscation, two 
hundred outlining a disastrous law, half a dozen 
messages covering decrees each one of which was 
a robbery on a grand scale. 

It took thought and realized what every school- 
boy knows, that you can tie one hand behind 
your back and still get along if you are clever and 
husky. But with two hands tied behind your 
back, you have not evened things to the level of 
the weakest member of your social community; 
you have gone further and simply made yourself 
the easy prey of the smallest urchin mean enough 
to spit in your face. This question of meanness 
is the canker at the heart of our altruism toward 
Mexico. The Mexican has never known the sensa- 
tion of chivalry; it has never occurred to him to 
spare a fallen foe. The mere fact of a man's 
having his hands tied appears to him the most 
reasonable argument for slapping his face. "What 
better chance could you possibly get?" he asks. 



192 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

and stands absolutely bewildered by the conten- 
tion that our self-made impotence is a thing to 
be respected. Probably the most surprised man 
in Mexico to-day is Herrera, on trial for murdering 
Carranza in his sleep. 

Having had this truth thoroughly drummed 
into it the State Department finally realized that 
there is only one path back to safe and sane rela- 
tions with Mexico. It saw in the Constitutionalist 
government's growth a noxious plant that had 
grown^to unprecedented proportions because it 
was being watered by an unprecedented forbear- 
ance on our part, a plant fertilized by the bodies of 
hundreds of murdered Americans and sustained by 
robbery of thousands of others. There was but 
one recourse from the view-point of common sense 
and mercy as well as from that of legitimate 
protection to Americans abroad, cind it consisted 
in an abrupt withdrawal of the forbearance which 
had caused the mischief, a reversal to negotiation 
by ultimatum only. 

Let me quote further from the article from The 
New York World cited before. After remarking 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 193 

that when the World War ended the President was 
too absorbed in other matters to bother about 
Mexico, it proceeds: "As a consequence matters 
drifted on until the Senate Sub-Committee took 
an active interest in the situation, seeking by 
publicity not exactly to bring about intervention, 
as so many people have supposed, but to obtain a 
withdrawal of the recognition the United States 
had extended to the Carranza Government. Even 
if the plan failed, it was thought the moral in- 
fluence of the investigation would promote a 
healthier regard for the lives and properties of 
American citizens, especially in the vexatious oil 
controversy. 

"There is some reason to believe that both 
Secretary Lansing and Ambassador Fletcher were 
so ready to cooperate with the Senate Committee 
as to give the impression that they believed their 
own hand in diplomacy would be strengthened 
thereby in dealing directly with the Carranza 
Government. But President Wilson upset all 
plans. Not only did he decline to countenance 
any cooperation between Secretary Lansing and 



1^4 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

the Senate Committee looking toward a with- 
drawal of recognition and, incidentally, considered 
the Jenkins case a rather flimsy pretext for inter- 
national strife, but he accepted Ambassador 
Fletcher's resignation without so much as a word 
of appreciation for the many and trying months 
he had spent in wrestling with the Mexican situa- 
tion both in Mexico City and Washington." 

Those two paragraphs are exceedingly interest- 
ing. In the first place they are accurate; in the 
second they show how mild was the initial step by 
which the State Department hoped to force the 
Mexican government into advancing a single pawn 
on the chess-board of international friendship. 
It purposed merely to withdraw recognition 
of Carranza. It is amusing to compare the im- 
portance we attach to this recognition with the 
reception it got at Carranza's hands at the time of 
its occurrence. By giving it out to the press as a 
minor news item with no comment whatever he 
used it to emphasize his isolation from the United 
States and subsequently consigned it to the 
lumber-room of national rubbish. 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 195 

Does this mean that if we actually did with- 
draw recognition such action would not affect the 
standing of Mexico's executive? Not at all; It 
means merely that the Constitutionalist machine 
has been playing and still triumphantly plays its 
game of bluff with mechanical consistency and 
will continue to play it until it sees the shadow cast 
before of a genuine ultimatum, be its nature what 
it may. At long last the State Department awoke 
to the absurdity of its monologue behind a dust- 
covered diplomatic chess-board while its opponent 
was engaged in grim poker. It knew that any- 
thing in the line of an ultimatum that meant what 
it said would serve to call the bluff and it evolved 
the meek and purely negative recourse of with- 
drawing its previous recognition. 

Ask yourself in all fairness if this move savored 
of intervention. It did not, but it did contain the 
seed of action. It marked the turning point where 
the Department was willing to avow to the world 
that it had gone its limit along the road of "let 
her slide" and was ready to drop the parrot call 
to Mexico of, "Whatever you do, we won't do 



1% IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

anything," and substitute for it a sequence of 
pregnant phrases beginning, "If you don't do 
so-and-so in forty-eight hours, we will do so-and- 
so. 

Let me interject an incident In support of the 
assertion that anything in the line of an ultimatum 
would have served to check the unbridled assault 
of the Mexican^administration on fundamental 
rights of Americans within its territories. In 
August of last year a five-line despatch slipped into 
the papers to the effect that the United States was 
about to reverse its "policy** toward Mexico. 
This announcement caused no surprise in the 
United States and had been actually expected Jn 
Mexico since the signing of the armistice. So 
inevitable and so reasonable had It appeared to 
officials of every category that they had been 
indulging In a last orgy of petty affronts under the 
old status of "hands off.'* Now It Is a matter of 
fact that within forty-eight hours of the publica- 
tion of this small news Item two cabinet officers 
and three other Individuals prominent In the 
Girranza ranks got In touch with an American 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 197 

who had had intimate relations with his Embassy 
and Consulate General to learn when and how the 
crash was to arrive. The burden of their nervous 
cry was that they had long "seen it coming" and 
wanted inside seats on the new band-wagon. 

If ever there was a moment when the Carranza 
regime was open to reasonable negotiations it was 
while this mere rumor of a change in American 
tactics was in the air. A quiver of the inter- 
national weather-vane was enough to start the 
bandit government scrambling, but before the echo 
of the disturbance could reach Washington the 
State Department was forced to announce that 
the declaration of a change of "policy" toward 
Mexico was erroneous and that no reversal was 
contemplated. Immediately the smile reappeared 
on the face of the Mexican tiger. He was dazed 
by this bit of incredible luck but promptly and 
philosophically returned to the carcass. The end 
of the free lunch on American lives and property 
was not yet; so much to the good. 

This incident stands out like a shining light in 
support of those American officials who asserted 



198 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

time and again that a firm hand laid on Mexico 
would have led to peace and not to war, and inci- 
dentally would have saved what was good in 
Carranza to the service of his country. It answers 
the lollipop pacifists who have endeavored to 
establish as an axiom the principle of total blind- 
ness as a requisite to leadership and lays at their 
door, where it belongs, the blame for passively 
sinking us deeper and deeper in a mire of our own 
creation. It thunders in ears which will not hear 
the truth that by nature, training and precedent 
the Mexican despises forbearance but bows to 
pressure. 

Now get a picture clearly in your mind. At 
the beginning of this current year the position of 
the State Department suddenly crystallized, pre- 
cipitated by the Jenkins outrage. The conviction 
that under the slogan of "No more shilly-shally- 
ing!" we might yet save the day for a settle- 
ment of the Mexican embroglio without inters 
tention soaked up gradually from its source in 
the heart of every Amerlceui official on the spot, 
bar none, until it saturated the entire Department 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 199 

and reached an arbitrary limit in the Secretary 
of State. Beyond him it could not go for reasons 
already stated. But its long labor was not entirely 
lost, for it served to bring Mexican affairs, as an 
issue, squarely on the administrative carpet. 

Here is the picture. The Department through 
its action in the Jenkins case said to the public, 
"We who are about to die salute you. It is our 
opinion that no ambassador should be sent into the 
berserk land of Mexico and that furthermore we 
should withdraw our recognition of one who has 
steadfastly held aloof from even a bowing ac- 
quaintance. We believe that this pressure, stead- 
ily increased, will point the way to a settlement 
with peace and that any other road will lead us 
farther into the dark forest of misunderstanding. 
We confess past error and declare for negotiation 
by ultimatum only rather than no negotiation at 
all. Incidentally, squeezed between a rising bed 
of thorns and the smothering blanket of a deaf 
ear, we stand or fall by the cardinal issue that the 
Department of State is an essential branch of the 
mechanism of government physically incapable of 



200 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

functioning under administration by blind pre- 
conception from above when It Is being choked by 
contrary facts from within." 

Thus having declared itself the Department 
fell and It fell hard. With the dismissal of the 
Secretary and the elimination of Fletcher, It was 
swept bare of the Icist major official conversant 
with the actual Mexican situation; with the ap- 
pointment of a new ambassador, categorical an- 
swer was given to Lansing's swan-song regardless 
of the new surrender to Carranza and the fresh 
betrayal of American lives which It necessarily 
entailed; with the assertion of the doctrine of no 
advice from advisers the executive chariot wheels 
plunged one revolution farther Into the sea of 
mud which is non-existent by presidential decree, 
but which continues to befoul our southern 
border just the same. 

The facts are now before the reader but there Is 
one crucial point on which he can be given no 
Information and that is, what was the Intention, 
good or bad, behind the appointment of a fresh 
ambassador? Was there any plan, seine or Insane, 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 201 

for a constructive policy toward Mexico to sup- 
plant the scheme evolved under Mr. Lansing? 
If there was no plan and if no adequate settle- 
ment was aimed at or intended the position of any 
one accepting the Mexican post with open eyes, 
irrespective of individuality, would be ambiguous 
and unenviable. If he acquiesced knowingly to 
the posture of a brass-monkey which was forced 
on unwilling predecessors he would lay himself 
open to a charge of time-serving complacency. 
If he surrendered what shreds of dignity we have 
left by being the medium through which it is 
suggested to Mexico, under whatever control, 
that we wipe out all scores and start afresh, the 
scores being totally on our side of the slate, he 
would become an active partner in the infamy of 
a great betrayal. There is no middle ground 
in a game where your opponents never emerge 
from behind their own goal line. 

How far that betrayal has already gone is 
measured by the milestones of five hundred and 
sixty-one murdered Americans, two victims hav- 
ing been added to the list since this chapter was 



202 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

begun. In regard to no single one of these cases 
have we taken any action whatever beyond 
stereotyped notes. Compare that Inactivity on 
our part with the astonishing sworn testimony 
of Judge E. L. Medler, before whom six of the Co- 
lumbus raiders were tried for murder, convicted and 
sentenced to be hung. The evidence was given 
before the Senate Sub-Committee for the investi- 
gation of Mexican affairs in February of this year. 

Judge Medler. He (Mr. Stone) produced a 
telegram from the Attorney General. 

Senator Fall. The Attorney General of the 
United States? 

Judge Medler. The Attorney General of the 
United States; containing these instructions, 
which I read. He also produced a telegram from 
General Funston, who was then in charge of the 
Southern Department, in San Antonio, and also 
produced a telegram from the Secretary of War, 
or the Secretary of State— I cannot remember 
which — it is my present recollection it was from 
the Secretary of State, but I would not be positive 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 203 

as to this. The substance of these telegrams was 
that these various departments protested against 
the trial of the Villa raiders, or Columbus raiders, 
as we called them, on the ground that it would 
involve the United States in international com- 
plications with Mexico. 

Senator Fall. These telegrams were submitted 
to you? 

Judge Medler. They were submitted to me in 
open court. 

Senator Fall. What was your decision? 

Judge Medler. I told Mr. Stone that these 
defendants were regularly indicted by a properly 
impaneled grand jury of Luna County; that they 
were in charge of the sheriff of Luna County; 
that the grand jury had previously reported that 
the jail of Luna County was insanitary and not a 
proper place to confine prisoners; and that to 
continue the trial of this case would involve their 
being held in jail for six months, and I saw no 
reason why the court could not proceed to try this 
case on the following morning; that General Per- 
shing was in Mexico with his expedition trying to 



204 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

arrest Francisco Villa, a co-defendant named in 
this Indictment; and that if the trial of these raiders 
would involve the United States in international 
complications, to my mind it would seem that 
the United States was already involved. In 
other words, I practically told him there would 
be no "watchful waiting" around my court or any 
of my courts. I think that was the substance of 
the language I used. 

Ask your heart whether it stands with this 
Texas judge or with the various departments that 
were feverishly active in their attempts to save six 
invaders of our own soil but have never been 
allowed to lift a finger for the protection of 
Americans across the line; and while you are ask- 
ing that question remember that when we were 
engaged in the World War and at a time when the 
fate of this nation and its Allies depended largely 
on a supply of fuel oil, there was a larger percentage 
of Americans murdered in the Mexican oil fields 
than teas \illed in the trenches of Europe. 

In paraphrasing above the valedictory of the 



NEGOTIATION BY ULTIMATUM ONLY 205 

State Department as an integral part of our ma- 
chinery of government there is no intention of 
ridicule. I was a member of its official family 
under John, Hay, Root, Bacon, Knox, Bryan and 
Lansing and from that intimacy can testify to its 
one-time peculiar atmosphere of dignity, patience, 
power and almost parental guidance, but if you 
will take Hay's tenure of office as marking the 
apex of the Department's influence abroad. Root's 
as the high-water mark of internal reform, and 
cast up accounts against the chaos that was Bryan 
and the long inglory that was Lansing you will 
perceive a distinct recovery from ignominy in the 
final gesture of Captain Lansing as he went down 
with his sinking ship. 

Because it was done apparently by request we 
are apt to lose sight of the significance of his act 
of official suicide. Remember that whatever the 
conjunction of causes which brought it about, 
those causes came to a iinal issue on a unanimous 
conviction within the Department itself that the 
only way to peace with Mexico without dishonor 
is the path of negotiation by ultimatum only. 



206 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

If that policy was the best way out of the mess 
of Mexico in nominal control of a central power 
it will apply fourfold to Mexico in the throes of 
civil strife or under a fresh dictatorial rule. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ONLY WAY 

With the death of Carranza, there is bound to be 
in this country a rejuvenation of misguided toler- 
ance. Already one hears talk on all sides of the 
propriety of patience while the latest leader of 
the Mexicans proves himself; editorials appear 
from day to day directing attention to Mexican 
affairs as being in a state of transition and coun- 
seling a policy of observation. Few seem to 
realize that it is far more important to the peace 
of this hemisphere that we should made demands 
for constructive activity in Washington just now 
lather than for a miracle in Mexico. 

What does that statement mean? It means 
that if we had a carefully constructed policy to- 
ward Mexico and followed it consistently, there 
would be no Mexican problem. There is one 
sense in which we are criminally responsible for 
every disturbance in Mexico and it can be summed 

207 



208 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

up in the general accusation that we are looking 
the wrong way. Our whole attitude Is and has 
been one of facing toward Mexico when we ought 
to face toward Washington. If we demand the 
right thing of our own government and get it, 
evolve a policy and follow it steadfastly, we need 
never worry about what is happening across the 
border, because what happens across the border 
has for a hundred years been an inverted reflection 
of the attitude of Washington. 

I have yet to meet an educated Mexican or an 
American with experience in Mexico who does not 
admit that the plan outlined in the following pages 
is the only way toward a permanent cure. It will 
prove comprehensible, however, only to those who 
are willing to stand with their backs toward the 
din in Mexico and contemplate the stagnant 
inaction of Washington in the face of a great and 
humane opportunity. Why watch Mexico's 
sixty-fourth exp)eriment founded on exactly the 
same ingredients that made up its predecessors? 
Why insist upon being told the same answer sixty- 
four times? Why not try one constructive exper- 



THE ONLY WAY 209 

iment of our own, a sensible one with a fair chance 
of astounding success? 

Do you think Mexico has changed because 
Diaz fell or because the individual, Carranza, has 
now gone by the board? Listen. On August thir- 
teenth, just forty-two years ago, Mr. Evarts, Sec- 
retary of State, addressed an instruction to John 
W. Foster, then American Minister to Mexico, in 
which the following passage occurs: "The first 
duty of a government is to protect life and property. 
This is a paramount obligation. For this govern" 
ments are instituted, and governments neglecting or 
failing to perform it become worse than useless. 
This duty the government of the United States has 
determined to perform to the extent of its power 
toward its citizens on the border. It is not solicitous, 
it never has been, about the methods or ways in which 
that protection shall be accomplished, whether by 
formal treaty stipulation or by informal convention; 
whether by the action of judicial tribunals or that 
of military forces. Protection in fact to American 
lives and property is the sole point upon which the 
United States are tenacious,^* 



210 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

G)mpare the dignity and force of this utter- 
ance with the disastrous benevolence of the hun- 
dred and one devitalized protests addressed to the 
Mexican government during the Wilson adminis- 
tration. Ask yourself frankly if the paramount 
obligations of government have in truth become 
obsolete during the last half century and whether 
you prefer costly experiments in altruism to 
"protection in jacC of American lives and prop- 
erty. 

Did Mr. Evarts' communication lead to war? 
It did not. There is a very human story originat- 
ing with the son of Diaz as to the effect produced 
on his father at the first reading of a copy of this 
informal note. He says that the President suf- 
fered a ^*coraJe,^* an ailment unknown to Anglo- 
Saxon pathology but common among Latins and 
which can best be described as a fit of anger so 
intense that there are cases where it has brought 
sudden death to its victims. It should not be 
confused with apoplexy as its one source is un- 
bridled rage. 

The story continues that when Diaz recovered 



THE ONLY WAY 21 1 

from his outburst of passion he entered a period of 
calm consideration from which he emerged smiling, 
struck the offending paper a crackling blow and 
exclaimed, "EI Fantasma! With this I will 
muzzle my insubordinate generals. With this I 
can persuade them that the United States means 
business; they will either carry out my orders or 
fight the United States." That day marked the 
beginning of twenty-five years of peace not only 
along the troubled border but throughout Mex- 
ico. 

To comprehend the full meaning of this inci- 
dent it is necessary to recall the long epoch during 
which El Fantasma, the Spectre, was a common 
phrase used throughout Spanish America to 
denote the United States and its supposed pred- 
atory ambitions. Diaz himself did not believe 
in the phantom menace but he was quick to seize 
upon what was apparently the first concrete 
evidence of its existence outside the bounds of 
popular fancy and employ it as a tool with which 
to control his unruly generals. 

Looking back on that quarter of a century of 



212 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

internal and external order the most prejudiced 
American should be able to read the writing on the 
wall. Mexico, led by Obregon or any other, 
needs no revival of the Diaz regime because, 
whatever its great benefits, in point of fact 
it was a hierarchy built on the restless founda- 
tion of social inequality; but she does need a re- 
vival of that fear of the Spectre which by raising 
a ghostly finger made possible her pacification 
from border to border and from sea to sea. If 
history of our contact with Mexico teaches one 
lesson above another it is that in the very name 
of peace we should plead as a matter of form and 
threaten as a matter of business. 

If this tenet implies brutality, let pacifists make 
the most of it. To me, and I trust to the reader, 
it is founded on logical deductions and can be 
reduced to the terms of an appeal to reason in the 
face of each eventually as it arises as opposed to a 
nebular altruism aimed at factors supposed to 
enter into the Mexican composition but which 
exist only in the stillborn hallucination of the 
minds that think inaction a synonym for peace. 



THE ONLY WAY 213 

As usual, events have been moving fast in 
Mexico as this book goes to press, but too much 
emphasis cannot be placed on the assertion made 
in its early pages that there exists in that country a 
permanent condition of unrest. Were it not for this 
static feature, running like an unchanging kit 
motif through the syncopated din of a century of 
revolutions and counterrevolutions, this argu- 
ment and its conclusions would fall to the ground 
with the collapse of Carranza and prove of tran- 
sitory value to all but students of political records. 
As the facts stand, however, the present crisis in 
Mexico merely adds strength to all that has been 
and will be said. 

This arraignment of a century of misgovern- 
ment aims at no temporary amelioration of our 
relations with Mexico. It is opposed to com- 
promise with any new link in the long chain of 
oligarchies which has held that country in bondage 
unless such compromise carries with it a factor of 
control, a principle of enduring stabilization. 
Individually my blood boils at the needless mas- 
sacre of Americans and American traditions under 



214 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

the Wilson illusion, but in my capacity as the 
interpreter of a condition I am bound to admit 
an unforeseen value in the results of the President's 
persistent apathy. 

That value lies in the very extremes to which 
abandonment of our interests has been carried. 
At the President's dictation we bowed not only to 
a long list of specific outrages; we went further. 
We were put in the position of voluntarily dis- 
carding all the machinery adjusted throughout 
the history of the United States toward safe- 
guarding international comity. The result is a 
wipe-out of established precedent and leaves us 
face to face with an opportunity never before 
equaled for resuming complete relations with 
Mexico on a new basis. 

This point cannot be pressed home too strongly 
because if there is one danger which threatens 
above all others a permanent solution of the diffi- 
culties between the two countries, it can be found 
in our national tolerance toward weaker peoples, 
in our disposition to let the bygones of the past be 
bygones of the future and in our inclination to put 



THE ONLY WAY 215 

off trouble until to-morrow even if we are con- 
vinced that it must grow with each day's delay. 
With Carranza superseded by a fresh nominal head 
of the government of Mexico ostensibly friendly to 
the United States, what will be the tendency in 
this country? To call it quits. 

I assert that that is a danger,— the danger of an 
alleviation substituted for a settlement. It would 
be to erect a temporary shack as a successor to the 
old building which the Wilson administration in 
the role of wrecker succeeded in completely 
leveling. We would be giving only half-service 
to our own immediate interests and the right to 
our heirs to look back from a black day in the 
future and say, "In 1920 you had all the strings 
of this puzzle at your fingers' ends; you could 
have settled it with a turn of the hand." Why not 
build solidly now for our own as well as future 
generations, for our own comfort and profit as 
well as for the well-being of Mexicans high and 
low? 

How can this be done? Let us review the sit- 
uation. On one side of the account Mexico owes 



216 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

US reparation for five hundred and sixty-four 
murdered Americans (three more having been 
added to the list since Chapter VI of this book was 
written); settlement of approximately one thou- 
sand claims on file with the Department of 
State; a portion of her foreign obligations under 
the heading of loans and interest payments 
passed; and reversal of her policy of confisca- 
tion. On the other side of the ledger we owe her 
nothing beyond the fact that through their own 
ignorance many of her subjects residing in this 
country were caught by the draft. 

This is merely the account current made up of 
specific items which, if Mexico should attain 
ability to pay, could be settled with any respons- 
ible head of her government. But there is another 
account of far greater importance which may be 
classed under the head of funds on deposit. What 
are the items that enter into it? Read them care- 
fully. The future of legitimate interests; assured 
protection of life and property not only of foreign- 
ers but also of Mexicans; freedom of commerce 
from the stains of bribery . and blackmail; the 



THE ONLY WAY 1^217 

right of way for trade over banditry; a reasonable 
average of justice in the national courts; prompt 
suppression of disorder; liquidation of foreign 
indebtedness, reestablishment of good faith as the 
basis of interrelations and actual religious free- 
dom. 

Does the settlement of this account look like 
a large order, incredible of fulfillment? It is 
attainable to us to-day by a reversal of every half- 
baked new doctrine infused into the Mexican 
embroglio by Wilson's administration. There 
is something distinctly ironical in that statement 
taken in conjunction with the list of benefits to be 
obtained, because the list I have given covers every 
goal aimed at so blindly by the "policies" of watchful 
waiting, hands off, no protection to nationals 
abroad, self-determination and salvation from within. 
In other words, pacifists and all those who have 
believed in the President's "stand" in regard to 
Mexico as a means to an end have been running 
away from the objects of their expressed desire. 

We are now prepared to consider our problem 
reduced tp final ternis with § yiew to solutioi| 



218 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

through the establishment of a fixed and reason- 
able policy. What are the needs of Mexico? By 
grace of the bare fact that she has been unable to 
borrow abroad since the fall of Huerta her finances 
in the face of her resources are in excellent condi- 
tion. She requires only $350,000,000 to put her 
square with the world. What she needs more than 
money, however. Is the assurance that it will be 
well and legitimately spent, which requisition 
carries with it as a corollary the stability of elected 
government secured from without since it cannot 
be from within. 

In return, what are our requirements of 
Mexico? Indemnity for murders of Americans 
and property losses; restitution of vested rights; 
expropriation by cash payments In lieu of worth- 
less bonds for lands confiscated; security of chan- 
nels of trade; the freeing of commerce from the 
shackles of tariff changes by presidential decree; 
suppression of banditry; liquidation of foreign 
obligations. 

There are obstacles to the simultaneous attain- 
ment of these two programmes, but they are by 



THE ONLY WAY 219 

no means insurmountable. On the Mexican side, 
personal profit to whoever happens to be in 
control will rule the day; on the American, 
national apathy and an impatient impulse to be 
quit of a troublesome issue by postponement may 
easily ruin our chance for a permanent adjustment 
of every item enumerated above; but in that 
event let the administration responsible beware of 
the consequences. The obstacle of personal profit 
on the Mexican side is misnamed; it is an advan- 
tage, a fulcrum we should be swift to employ by 
making it distinctly unprofitable for any individ- 
ual aspiring to the Mexican presidency to stand 
in the way of genuine reform or be the stumbling- 
block to tangible progress as opposed to illusory, 
endlessly repeated promises to be good. 

How is this end to be attained? By substitut- 
ing for the inanition of "watchful waiting," the 
policy of assertion; by replacing the passivity of 
"hands off" with a policy of graduated pressure; 
by admitting before the tribunal of God and the 
world that, whatever our secret inclination and 
intention, it was folly to abandon the parental 



220 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

slipper by shouting aloud "no force against a 
weaker nation"; finally, by resorting to negotiation 
by ultimatum only as a corrective for the costly ills 
of no negotiation whatever under the guise of a 
benevolence which has wiped out our prestige 
south of the Rio Grande and made the potting of 
American traditions of liberty and justice the 
sport of Mexican authority and the potting of 
Americans the pastime of peons. 

You are apt to think this a swing of the pendu- 
lum with a vengeance. It is. It marks the 
extreme of utility along the line of an established 
policy in contrast with the futility of the weather- 
vane of no policy whatever. It does not neces- 
sarily mean intervention by force of arms but it 
Joes mean business. It means that we would no 
longer sit back and wait for advances from those 
to whom delay brings nothing but profit, but that 
when we are ready to deal there will either be 
quick dealing or prompt trouble. 

So far this argument has limited itself to 
abstract reasoning; let us turn now to direct appli- 
cation in a form easy to understand and conse- 



THE ONLY WAY 22! 

quently easy to value. The policy outKned has 
three phases: assertion, graduated pressure, ne- 
gotiation by ultimatum. 

Under assertion we should (1) declare at once 
to whoever happens to be in control of Mexico 
an arbitrary price for every American murdered. 
(2) We should secure the reestablishment of the 
principle that government-owned railways are as 
responsible as private concerns for the full value 
of goods in transit. (3) We should demand 
guarantees to commerce that tariff changes not 
specifically legislated by the National Congress 
shall bear ninety days' notice. (4) We should 
insist that the confiscatory clauses of the constitu- 
tion of May, 1917, or of any other constitution 
shall not be retroactive against vested rights. 
(5) We should demand that sources of revenue 
pledged on the honor of the nation to specific for- 
eign obligations, be collected for and applied to 
those obligations. (6) We should stipulate that 
outrages amounting to specific persecution of the 
Catholic Church be indemnified and that the 



222 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

principle of absolute freedom in religious belief 
be reestablished. 

Do these demands appear unreasonable? Are 
you not astonished that not one of them has been 
pressed by the Wilson administration? The 
first two entail the suppression of banditry; they 
must be drastically enforced to overcome the 
natural belief of the peon acquired during the last 
seven years that Americans can be murdered with 
impunity and that property and loot are one and 
the same thing. The third implies nothing beyond 
the assurance that merchants who will not stoop 
to bribery of government official of every class, 
from cabinet officer to tally clck, will have an 
equal chance with those who at ^ resent do. The 
fourth carries out to fruition the principles laid 
down in our stillborn fighting note of April 2, 
1918. The fifth is merely a first step toward 
warding off the fully justified outcry that we may 
expect at any moment from England and France, 
demanding that we either raise the embargo of 
the Monroe Doctrine or insure their losses. The 
sixth is a matter of elementary justice, demanding 



THE ONLY WAY 223 

nothing more than equal treatment for every 
religious sect. 

What are the steps of graduated pressure? 
(1) Refusal to send an ambassador. (2) Post- 
ponement of recognition. (3) Embargo on 
loans, private or governmental. (4) Em- 
bargo on exports a .imports. (5) Closure of all 
channels of commu ^cation by sea or land. (6) 
Armed demonstratij^. (7) Intervention by 
force of arms. 

Count those steps, name them by the seven 
names of the days of the week, and you will realize 
two things: (1}^ their terrific power, especially 
since we would i^ all probability be joined in No. 
5 by England a^d France and possibly by Italy 
and Spain, and ;^) that there is a broad margin 
of safety even for the pacifist between No. 1 and 
No. 7. Incidentally, the shock that we would be 
called upon to bear on waking up to find our 
Mexican policy equipped with a backbone would 
be nothing in comparison with the shock the same 
discovery would bring to all and sundry of the 
fermenting factions across the border. 



224 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

Negotiation by ultimatum is the logical com- 
bination of the tenets of assertion and of grad- 
uated pressure. It will seem drastic only to those 
who are not intimately acquainted with the history 
of our relations with Mexico and who do not 
know that in the art of verbal subterfuge any 
Mexican who can read and write is our master. 
Words mean everything to him; facts nothing. 
Argument is not a means to an end but an end in 
itself. He will gab about national honor, national 
dignity, national pride, national sensitiveness and 
national sovereignty by the day and by the year 
to any one who will listen, but he will never say 
by any chance or on any provocation but one, 
"I admit the facts." The single provocation to 
which he bows, the only argument which he 
recognizes in his heart of hearts as valid in the 
long run, is force. That assertion strikes at the 
roots of his make-up; it applies equally to his 
interstate, national and international relations. 
It has just been demonstrated once more with 
peculiar emphasis. It carries a lesson many times 
repeated if we will only see it: whoever happens 



THE ONLY WAY 225 

to be on top, Diaz, Carranza, Obregon, Pablo 
Gonzalez or the civilian Robles Dominguez, 
Mexico Is the same. 

We now have the ingredients for a clear-cut 
sample deal: Mexico requires $350,000,000; we 
desire lasting stabilization of her internal and 
international situation. The policy of assertion 
implies that we do not wait, watchfully or other- 
wise. We should seek out the individual in major- 
ity control of Mexico and if there is none such, 
the leader best suited to our needs, and make him 
the following proposition. The United States will 
facilitate to his government of Mexico a loan of 
$350,000,000 on these conditions: That it be 
applied in conjunction with the country's normal 
sources of revenue, (1) to funding all national 
indebtedness; (2) to liquidating foreign obliga- 
tions; (3) to settlement of outstanding claims; (4) 
to automatic indemnity for lives of foreigners 
murdered; (5) to the guaranteeing of goods in 
transit over national railways; (6) to the systematic 
suppression of banditry; (7) to productive recon- 
struction; (8) to the holding of free elections. 



226 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

(9) The disbursing of all funds shall be intrusted 
to an international commission; In short, economic 
control. 

Immediately upon acceptance of these terms 
we should proceed to meet the events that would 
inevitably follow in the most practical manner 
at hand, either by strengthening the majority 
control or by lending overwhelming support in the 
form of funds, arms and ammunition to the leader 
chosen as the instrument of reform. In case there 
was categorical refusal from all Important Mexican 
factions we should Issue ultimatum and promptly 
apply our thumbscrew of graduated pressure, 
concluding, if necessary, with military occupation. 

I have outlined the transaction in what may 
appear to be brutal brevity with the double in- 
tention of leaving the issue clear beyond chance 
of cavil and showing It in Its worst light. We 
would naturally use a certain measure of soft soap, 
but soft soap has no place in this argument; It Is 
concerned only with grim actualities. And speak- 
ing of grim actualities there are two phrases em- 
ployed above which will react on Mexicans as 



THE ONLY WAY 227 

red rags on a bull. One is "economic control'*; 
the other is "military occupation." The stark 
finality of each might have been made more 
palatable by a coating of word-sugar but it 
would have been at the expense of clarity. It is 
intended that those phrases shall stand out naked- 
ly because they are of paramount significance. 
Economic control from without is the sine qua 
non of peace with Mexico and of peace within 
Mexico. Obregon or any other intelligent Mexi- 
can knows this to be the truth even if he does not 
dare say so publicly. Obregon cannot as\ for 
such control, but in his heart of hearts he would 
be glad to have it forced upon him. Why? 
Because the maladministration of public funds 
has been the cause of the downfall of every one of 
the almost innumerable governments of the Mexi- 
ican Republic. There is no exception, not even 
the reign of Diaz, who personally was no thief. 
Speaking of the Caja de Prestamos which Diaz 
and his Minister, Limantour, had planned for the 
salvation of the small farmer from the estate of 
peonage and which, as it turned out, became 



228 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

merely the instrument through which a coterie of 
officials enriched themselves, W. F. McCaleb 
says:* "And thus was launched what was to 
prove to be one of the most colossal of Mexican 
failures — a. failure which was to expose the Diaz 
administration to attack for deliberately playing 
into the hands of reckless friends. It is not to be 
believed, however, that the great President or his 
great minister were parties to any such plan. 
They were beaten at the game,'* 

The italics are mine. They are intended to 
emphasize the fact that not even a model of 
honesty among Presidents aided by a world- 
famous Minister of Finance of exceptional probity 
could stand against the perennial tide of Mexican 
graft which has overwhelmed one government 
after another with monotonous repetition and with 
every rising sweep has penetrated further and 
further with its corrosive influence into the vitals 
of the nation until to-day it is taken as a matter of 
course that ninety per cent, of all Mexican officials 
in positions of trust are openly corrupt and will 

♦ Preserd and Past Banking in Mexico, by W. F. McCaleb. 



THE ONLY WAY 229 

inevitably continue so until controlled by some 
greater power than any single faction of their 
peers. 

This IS not a case of the pot calling the kettle 
black. We have graft in our city and occasionally 
in our state governments on what appears to us a 
large scale, but it almost invariably is graft in the 
shape of a rake-off on contracts for something 
actually produced, — ^highways, public buildings or 
major constructions. The graft of Mexico, how- 
ever, is outright loot; its effect is to open simul- 
taneously all the arteries of the body politic and 
to pour the entire output of the life-blood of the 
nation direct into the gullets of the group in power. 
Practically every evil and every misery in Mexico, 
intrinsically the richest land on earth, can be 
traced to maladministration of public funds. 
Wipe out authoritative robbery on a colossal scale, 
even reduce it in terms of human frailty to a 
reasonable average of official peculation such as 
we have in this country, and Mexico's long epoch 
of permanent unrest will come to an end. 

We have an interest in that consummation and 



230 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

we alone have the power and the opportunity to 
bring it about. It is a cause to which altruists, 
pacifists, merchants, consumers, dollgir-diploma- 
tists and citizens of every category can subscribe 
with equal sincerity and profit. Even self-deter- 
minists, if they will admit the fact of to-day as a 
stepping-stone toward the dream of to-morrow, 
will find in economic control the one germinating 
seed of the tree of national life. Nor will its 
blessings escape the perception of intelligent 
Mexicans. From the lips out, they must assail 
it with all the age-worn phrases of insulted sover- 
eignty, but deep down in their hearts will ring 
such a paean of thanksgiving as has seldom echoed 
in the breasts of an entire people. 

I have set forth in a previous chapter the 
unholy alliance between the military and banditry 
in Mexico; a bandit is either the direct evolution 
of an unpaid soldier or he is armed and supplied 
with ammunition by an unpaid soldier. Economic 
control can destroy this alliance. How? By the 
organization of a force of picked Mexicans, com- 
manded by Mexicans, paid regularly and toell for 



THE ONLY WAY 231 

the preservation of order, dismissed promptly for 
inefficiency. The plan Is feasible. It is founded on 
certain elementary principles of human nature 
which have risen to the level of highly effective 
pride In the Askaris of Africa no less than in our 
own Texas Rangers, or the Canadian Mounted 
Police of the Northwest. There is but one abso- 
lutely essential condition : the power guaranteeing 
the safety of the money-bag at its source must be 
overwhelmingly greater than the power of any 
factional general inheriting an incontrollable dis- 
position to loot. In plain English we must make 
it clear that we will immediately destroy any assail- 
ant of the financial organization. 

I have also set forth in a previous chapter the 
fact that misery of the common people throughout 
Mexico is and often has been as heartrending in its 
own peculiar way as the tribulations of the 
Armenians. Mexicans have not been massacred 
by the thousands but they have been murdered 
by the hundreds and semi-starved by the millions. 
Summer and winter, year in and year out, they 
have been under the yoke of the oppressor, no 



232 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

lighter for having been dubbed with the ironical 
title of "self -determinism." Factors of oppression 
have led one group of the masses against another; 
the masses have never in a single instance risen 
against oppression though they have too often 
been deluded into thinking they were doing so. 

This condition arises from ignorance, ignorance 
from almost universal penury and penury from 
maladministration of public funds. Economic 
control will eliminate it. So great are the present 
natural resources of the country, so prolific the 
known sources of undeveloped wealth, so wide the 
possibilities of an industrial field swarming with 
unemployed labor, that it is reasonable to assume 
that ten years of financing along lines of legitimate 
reconstruction would raise the per capita wealth 
of the nation in ratio with its foreign indebtedness 
to as high a level as that of any other people in the 
world. That is an immediate material advantage 
but it carries in addition the seeds of a spiritual 
rejuvenation. It is almost an axiom that impov- 
erished countries breed dishonesty in officials and 
the converse is equally true; a nation rich in 



THE ONLY WAY 233 

distributed wealth can find honest servants on the 
principle that full pockets tend to breed honest 
men. 

No one can imagine a scheme of national re- 
construction which would not include the estab- 
lishment of a comprehensive system of lower 
education, and this feature alone of a broad- 
minded economic control should provide the 
leaven to raise Mexico in the course of years above 
the necessity of tutelage and back to the plane of 
an undivided sovereignty. For a century her 
leaders have been breaking promises of educa- 
tional reform; I propose nothing more radical 
than to make them keep them. 

It would be possible to continue for pages the 
elucidation of details in connection with the 
administration of economic control but enough has 
already been said to indicate the spirit and the 
scope of its proposed enforcement. A full list 
of its benefits would only tend to befog the public 
mind on the main issue of its necessity, of its 
ultimate inevitability. The question is only one 
of time. Shall we start now when the international 



234 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

chess-board is swept clean of precedent or shall we 
make a forced beginning at some later date In the 
face of added complications? 

Before some one else can say It for me, let me 
state here and now that economic control Is 
Intervention, — administrative intervention to fore- 
stall Intervention under arms. Nothing short of a 
conviction that maladministration of public funds 
Is the sole cause of a permanent condition of unrest 
in Mexico would justify this encroachment on her 
sovereignty. On the other hand, nothing short of 
the factors which make that unrest Intolerable 
to us, — ^her nearness, the extent of American 
Interests already Involved, the legitimate demands 
of commerce, the annoyance of a constantly grow- 
ing friction, the Impossibility now or ever of escap- 
ing from her Into our treasured shell of Isolation, — 
could present the eventual action as inevitable. 

In addition to that argument we face the 
obligation of a self-imposed responsibility. Under 
the Wilson administration we placed Carranza 
in power and assured him more autocratic latitude 
in any given month of his reign than we accorded 



THE ONLY WAY 235 

to Diaz during a quarter of a century of order. 
We were active parties to a more complete looting 
and destruction of national resources in Mexico 
than has ever before been accomplished. And to 
what an end! Bear witness not only the present 
upset of the Mexican garbage can but the silent 
protest of five hundred and sixty-four Americans 
murdered by a blood-relation as surely and as 
futilely as was Abel by Cain. 

It has already been indicated that we should 
beware of dickering in promissory notes with 
Obregon or any other dominant leader in Mexico. 
It should be the intention of the policy of asser- 
tion to deal with hard facts as they turn up and let 
hopeful illusions take care of themselves, to give 
practical assistance on the basis of cash on delivery 
with the legal three days of grace and no more. 
The steps of graduated pressure, seven in number, 
by which this end is to be obtained, I have already 
listed and they are entitled to certain explanatory 
comment. 

The first, refusal to send a fresh ambassador, 
has already received the effective sanction of the 



236 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

Senate but, standing alone, it has little immediate 
force. In fact, the eflBcacy of the seven steps 
proposed depends on their cumulative weight 
being brought rapidly into play. To put it graph- 
ically, we should say in effect, "Accept our terms 
or we will refuse you an ambassador on Sunday, 
deny you recognition on Monday, embargo 
loans on Tuesday, stop all exports and imports on 
Wednesday, close all channels of communication on 
Thursday, make a naval demonstration on Fri- 
day and begin intervention under arms on 
Saturday." 

The writer is not one of those superficial invest- 
igators of Mexico who have rashly prophesied 
that any given division of Mexicans will support 
intervention even when on its face it will operate 
to the personal profit of the group in question. 
He knows that such is not the case. A Mexican 
will tell you in private that he prays nightly for 
intervention but he knows that should he make 
the confession in public he would do it at the peril 
of his life. Nor do I believe that economic control 
will be accepted by any governing faction in 



THE ONLY WAY 237 

Mexico without a fight unless the faction and the 
country at large are persuaded of its inevitability. 

This means that we should face frankly the 
problem of military occupation. It is my personal 
opinion that a proper application of the six pre- 
ceding steps of pressure will make this last resort 
unnecessary, but in justice to that large section of 
the American public which has acquired a very 
natural aversion toward the mere name of war on 
the grounds that it is too costly in lives and money, 
certain special features of the Mexican situation 
should be emphasized. In the first place, the 
rounding-up of Mexico could in all probability 
be accomplished with our regular army supported 
by volunteers at a cost of less lives than we have 
lost by murder in that country since the fall 
of Diaz. In the second place, this war would pay 
for itself and leave a dividend not only in happi- 
ness to tortured millions but in actual cash. 

It is not long since the press reported that the 
State of Texas had offered to undertake from its 
own resources the complete subjection of Mexico if 
Washington would merely give its sanction and 



238 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

while it IS doubtful that the story is genuine, it 
nevertheless contains a kernel of truth in its 
assumption of military weakness across the border. 
We do not have to go back to the fact that General 
Scott won an uninterrupted sequence of battles 
and finally took Mexico City with a paltry ten 
thousand men in his command; we need only 
consider that Mexico to-day is weak not because 
Mexicans are poor fighters but because they have 
neither money, nor arms, nor ammunition to fight 
with. 

It is for this reason that the term "military 
occupation" has been employed. The organized 
resistance which a sufficient and fully equipped 
invasion would be called upon to meet would be 
negligible. By an overwhelming advantage not 
only in numbers but in armament our losses could 
be reduced to a minimum and would doubtless be 
wholly accounted for by sniping. 

By far the most important mission of the army 
would be the rapid pacification of ports and chan- 
nels of commerce, for in this feature alone there 
would lie a prompt and surprisingly large cash 



THE ONLY WAY 239 

return to our temporary authority as well as to 
native merchants, and there is no force quite so 
stabilizing as prosperity. Carranza's Controller 
of the Exchequer gave it out on more than one 
occasion that the army was swallowing sixty per 
cent, of the total revenue of the country and 
according to Carranza's own statement that rev- 
enue for the current fiscal year was to amount to 
$60,000,000, 

The World War got us so accustomed to talking 
in billions that it is difficult to realize that an 
armed misunderstanding with Mexico has no 
single feature in common with the work we had 
to do in Europe, least of all as regards financing. 
The $36,000,000 which Mexico herself admits to 
be the price she paid her army for not pacifying 
the country, added to the large sum which we 
are spending regularly in policing the border, — 
a sum which since the fall of Diaz already totals 
over a billion dollars, — should very nearly cover 
the entire expense of feeding pacification to her 
from an iron spoon. 

What are the sources of her revenue? Import 



240 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

taxes, export taxes, internal excise. Ninety per 
cent, of the first two flow through the seaports of 
Tampico, Vera Cruz and Progresso and the land 
ports of entry on the border at Brownsville, Eagle 
Pass, Laredo, El Paso and Nogales. We should 
ignore all other points until after the taking of 
Mexico City. 

The steps for the subjection of the country, 
not including total pacification, have naturally 
been fully discussed on more than one occasion by 
our military authorities and are easy of compre- 
hension. In a nutshell they would comprise the 
formation of main bases at San Antonio, Galves- 
ton and New Orleans; landings and subsidiary 
bases at Tampico and Vera Cruz; two columns, 
one from Laredo, one from Tampico converging 
on Monterey where another strong base would be 
formed to withstand attacks from Chihuahua; 
two columns, one from Monterey and another 
from Tampico converging on San Luis Potosi, and 
after that all would be over bar the shouting as 
far as mere conquest is concerned. 

These advances would all be along railways suid 



THE ONLY WAY 241 

the same principle should be followed in the tedious 
work of pacifying the whole country. We should 
follow and possess thoroughly every railway 
radiating from Mexico City. Once that important 
step was taken we would be in immediate control 
of more revenue than Carranza ever thought of 
collecting, for it is an admitted fact that fifty per 
cent, of railroad receipts and forty per cent, of 
collections at Mexican ports of entry were never 
accounted for to the Carranza government. 

This point of material benefit is stressed merely 
to support the contention that an occupation of 
Mexico could be made to pay for itself; but there 
are many Americans who do not worry over the 
cost of armed intervention half as much as they 
worry over the difficulties confronting occupation 
and total pacification. Basing their estimates on 
our experience in the Philippines, they say that 
the same accomplishment in Mexico would require 
ten years and a million men. 

I dispute that prediction, not from military 
knowledge but from a knowledge of economic and 
social conditions in Mexico and of the personal 



242 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

equation. Carranza at the height of his power 
never controlled all the important towns and 
railways of the country, but he could have done so 
had the military at any time been sincere in his 
support or in the work of wiping out banditry. 
The Mexican military never could be sincere in 
such a work of self-elimination. There is no 
question that our army would be sincere, and it 
is my opinion that with important towns, railways 
and ports, the total sources of revenue, firmly 
held and protected, pacification would follow 
automatically. The tendency of the peon is 
overwhelmingly toward peace. The moment 
markets presented a more profitable return than 
looting, markets would begin to win him. 

This process would be slow unless we aided it 
by certain highly effective innovations (in Mexico) 
such as the offering of twenty-five cents for every 
cartridge turned in, twenty dollars for every gun 
and from five thousand to ten thousand dollars 
for every listed bandit leader delivered dead or 
alive, preferably dead, with a special prize of 
thirty thousand dollars for Pancho Villa dead. I 



THE ONLY WAY 243 

am not joking. This is good sense, if ever §ood 
sense was put in print. It is equally good reason- 
mg to say that it would be possible to build up by 
an appeal to pride more rapidly in Mexico than in 
any other country a force of well paid Mexicans 
under Mexican leaders who would keep order with 
an iron hand in any district wholly entrusted to 
them and who would in turn be kept in order by 
personal profit linked to fear of the consequences of 
defection. Such a force would be the natural and 
most efficient instrument for cleaning up all out- 
lying districts. 

In conclusion I wish to repeat that the policy 
of assertion broadly sketched in this chapter need 
not lead to armed intervention in Mexico nor will 
it lead to that extreme unless our interminable 
administrative vacillation during the last seven 
years has made it absolutely impossible for the 
Mexican mind to believe that we at last mean 
business. This policy not only is a policy, but it 
presents Mexico with an alternative, a hard alter- 
native but nevertheless a choice; economic control 
or military occupation. I desire to go on record 



244 IS MEXICO WORTH_,SAVING 

with the assertion that there is no middle ground. 
If we stop short of economic control, we will 
travel again and again mere byroads to peace. 
Negotiation with any ruler of Mexico which does 
not cling to economic control as an irreducible 
minimum will be nothing but a mowing of the 
disastrous weeds that spring perennially from 
maladministration of public funds in that un- 
happy country. 

In surrendering the case of Mexico to the 
judgment and the verdict of the public, I wish to 
disclaim emphatically any chauvanistic tendency 
but in the same breath I wish to assert that Mexico 
in the hands of any oligarchy is a knife at our back, 
pricking us to-day, ready to stab us to-morrow. If 
any one can read these pages, condensed from an 
enormous mass of corroborative material for the 
benefit of the practical man in a hurry, and doubt 
the whole-hearted sincerity of the contention that 
they point the way toward a lasting peace, it will 
be because his mind's eye has been dulled by too 
much long-distance gazing. 

For seven years we have allowed ourselves to 



THE ONLY WAY 245 

be led into ignoring the dominance of fact in the 
daily life of nations as well as of individuals. Who 
is foolish, the man who sees a mess and grabs for 
a mop or he who attempts to stand in the traffic 
at the corner of Broadway and Forty-second 
Street to fly a kite, fixes his persistent gaze upon 
it and murmurs over and over again, "The kite 
is at peace." I refuse to be a party to the flying 
of a kite of self-defeating altruism at the expense 
of our own broken bones and in the face of the 
age-long oppression of an entire people. 

On May twenty-sixth of this year The Freeman 
headed its "Current Comment" with the following 
remarks: "Here is something really worth while. 
In Washington, May tenth, Mr. Chamberlain, our 
former Consul-Ceneral in Mexico, gave a straight- 
forward, four-square, definite programme of what 
we should do in Mexico: 

**We should offer a loan sufficient to put its 
finances in shape, bound up with a treaty which 
would give us direct supervision of its economic 
affairs. The second step should be to withdraw 
the present recognition unless that was accepted. 
Still failing acceptance, the third step should be 



246 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

embargo; the fourth, commercial blockade; the 
fifth, a naval demonstration; lastly, a military 
occupancy. 

"One can understand that kind of talk and re- 
spect it. It is free from the nauseating humbug and 
buncombe which always goes with a British or 
American project of robbing one's neighbours. It 
advocates simple and undecorated highwaymanry; 
and if we can't resist the temptation to steal Mex- 
ico's property, let us by all means have the manly 
hardihood to say so, and not go snuffling around 
with our customary line of disgusting Ccint about 
doing Mexico for her own good, making Mexico 
safe for democracy, or what not. All honour to 
Mr. Chamberlain; this paper detests his doctrine, 
but it respects him sincerely, and trusts that his 
example will prevail mightily among the other 
buccaneers in Washington whose jaws are slaver- 
ing over Mexico at this moment." 

The qualified flattery of this excerpt more than 
balances the epithets of "highwaymcin" and 
"buccaneer." I welcome all of its inferences. 
The difference between Editor Fuller and myself. 



THE ONLY WAY 247 

aside from the nationality betrayed by his spelling, 
is the age-long division between the theorist with 
a pen and the man with the mop. There are cer- 
tain natures which will endure an open cesspool 
because it happens to be located across a garden 
boundary line; there are others to which an open 
cesspool IS a cesspool and a nuisance wherever 
you find it. The right of a country to misgovern 
itself is comparatively new in print but as dead in 
practise as the divine right of kings. The sources 
of this world's wealth are irrepressible springs; 
the peoples who give them no adequate outlet are 
doomed to be swept away sooner or later by the 
flood of their release at the touch of an alien wand. 
That assertion is founded on the theory of no man 
nor even on common sense; it merely states an 
historical fact of social evolution, not as com- 
munists would wish to see it but as nature ordains. 
It is not our fault that the law exists, but we all 
know it by heart; why not say so and be done 
with hypocrisy. 

Nor is the welfare of humanity divided into so 
many city lots entailed in perpetuity to this or 



248 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

that nation regardless of the uses to which the 
inheritance is put. The course of human welfare 
has its own fixed laws and its own slow but sure 
way of crossing arbitrary racial boundaries. Why 
fool ourselves or attempt to fool the world with 
admirable but ridiculous aspirations of isolation 
which become criminal the moment they make 
our eyes roll heavenward or toward Armenia in 
order to avoid looking in the face a job of impera- 
tive hygiene next door? 

There are doubtless among my readers some old 
enough in years or in historical recollection to 
recall the vogue of the Manifest Destiny, — the 
slogan of those American statesmen who openly 
championed the absorption of Mexico and Central 
America. Never was a movement better named. 
Disclaimed by generations, denied by politicians, 
repudiated by administrations, it travels its ap- 
pointed road so ponderously that intervals of 
decades half obliterate the memory of its last 
advance; even presidents who would obstruct its 
course come to the full sense of their impotence 



THE ONLY WAY 249 

only when it has swallowed and digested them. 
So in days to come the historian will see in Presi- 
dent Wilson, the altruist, an individual who by 
vicariously carrying chaos in Mexico to its highest 
pitch will have done the most toward destroying 
that country's national entity. 

Does this mean that the fulfillment of the Mani- 
fest Destiny in terms of territorial acquisition is 
inevitable whatever we do? It does not. It 
means that such a result is inevitable if we do 
nothing. There is just one way to fight a prairie 
fire and that is by starting another fire; there is 
just one way to obstruct the march of human wel- 
fare on its way to fill a vacuum and that is by the 
establishment of an opposing growth of like qual- 
ity. 

The Me;xican peoples are certainly worth saving 
and they will be saved if altruists can be shelved 
long enough for practical men to throw out a life- 
line; but if dreamers are to fiddle in Washington 
while the fires of oppression continue to burn across 
the border the day will inevitably come when the 



250 IS MEXICO WORTH SAVING 

absorption of Mexico, lock, stock and barrel, will 
be forced down our throats by the rigid finger of a 
destiny as implacable as the laws which decree 
that water shall flow down-hilL 

Americans to-day are surprisingly unanimous 
in their hope for a new hand on the helm of the 
ship of state. As regards Mexico, Republicans 
and Democrats alike demand no spectacular 
evolutions but a radical and deliberate change of 
the course out of the doldrums of stagnation and 
into the clean and open sea. Either party on 
assuming the fresh mandate could well subscribe 
to the following creed: Believing that there is an 
underlying cause for the permanent condition of 
unrest during a century of self-determination in the 
Republic of Mexico and that we should fully recog-' 
nize no new government in that country until the 
rights of Americans no less than those of the sub- 
merged masses of the Mexicans shall have been 
safeguarded by treaty stipulations insuring inter- 
national justice and internal stability, we acknowU 
edge an obligation to substitute an active policy to 



THE ONLY WAY 251 

this end in place of the negative and destructive 
passivity which during the Wilson administration 
has uprooted American traditions and at the same 
time brought nothing but disaster to the Mexicans 
themselves. 



THE END 



31^.77 



UBRARY OF CONGRESS 

016 241 881 6 , 






